Candidates in Dublin North for the three potential alternative coalition partners - Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens - have committed themselves to demanding a review of plans for a second main runway at Dublin airport.
The latest to do so is Dr James Reilly (FG). He has told Uproar (United Portmarnock Residents Opposing Another Runway) that a "full independent study" of the Dublin Airport Authority's €150 million plan needs to be carried out.
Uproar will be lobbying Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny TD when he visits Malahide tomorrow to confirm that this is now his party's position. Fine Gael previously supported the runway on the basis that "it's in the national interest".
Fingal County Council's decision in April to approve the scheme is the subject of 15 appeals to Bord Pleanála, including one lodged by Green Party leader Trevor Sargent TD, who also represents Dublin North.
Skerries-based Labour candidate Brendan Ryan told Uproar last month that "we urgently need a strategic evaluation of our airport infrastructural needs".
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte TD has also said it was "remarkable" that the second runway plan should have proceeded to this stage without a proper cost-benefit analysis. "That seems to me to be wrong."
Last October Minister for Finance Brian Cowen issued a revised set of guidelines for public capital projects, specifying that all proposals costing €30 million or more would have to undergo an economic cost-benefit appraisal.
However, in May of last year the Government told the airport authority to proceed with a €1.2 billion plan that includes the second runway, a second main terminal and a new Pier D without insisting on such an appraisal.
Uproar, which represents residents of Portmarnock whose homes would be under the flight path of the new runway, has argued that plans to double the airport's capacity to 38 million passengers a year need to be re-examined.
It has submitted an analysis to Bord Pleanála of the airport expansion plan, claiming a second runway would generate "at least three times the traffic volume" on the M50 as the proposed Ikea superstore in Ballymun.
It is anticipated that the appeals board will ask the National Roads Authority, which has opposed Ikea on traffic grounds, to spell out the implications of the airport expansion plan for the local road network.
Fingal County Council has calculated that new relief roads to cope with an expanded Dublin airport would cost at least €200 million. It imposed a record infrastructure contribution of €21 million as a condition for approving the runway plan.
