Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

Interesting. Does that mean that effectively the DAA may be the sole (monopoly) buyer? If so they should be in a good position to bargain down the price to be paid for the land. And maybe the Government and Fingal Co Council should be using whatever muscle they have to resinforce this.

The government needs to just CPO it at the average price for agricultural land in the area +10%.

None of this engaging with very obvious land hoarding/speculation at the cost of the Irish state and tax payer.

I suspect the McEvaddy family envisaged that they'd try a case to the Competition Authority / CCPC at some point if they got far enough down the road of actually developing a terminal (as opposed to simply land-hoarding). Hoping for similar thinking to the Single European Railway Directive to try and force a split of the infrastructure management and the airport management.

And with their advancing age and with air travel arguably about to peak, them wanting to cash in now and pass that hoarding risk on to a new owner is perfectly reasonable. Shouldn't change anything for the DAA.

Not saying numbers will peak. Just surmising that it's reasonable to justify cashing in now with 10+ years of development at Dublin pencilled in without needing this land. By then environmental concerns, sustainability, fuel costs etc may make it harder to justify massive air expansion in Europe.

From what I've read in the Galway forum the Comers are even worse, buy up prime sites then leave them derelict for decades (in an urban area that should be taxed at at least 10% of site value per year left undeveloped, if unpaid for two years land forfeited)

The energy density of Hydrogen is so low relative to that of conventional fuel that you need to store the H2 at 300 to 600 times atmospheric pressure, where I gather you need spherical tanks to take the pressure. I'm sure such pressure vessels are quite heavy (OK for a train but not for a plane).

I would not like to fly in any aircraft with such a huge amount of H2 under such huge pressure. A flying bomb IMHO.

For anything other sthan short haul, it's hard to see zero emissions aircraft.

Kerosene powered aircraft get lighter as fuel burns, thus increasing in efficiency.

Electric aircraft remain the same weight.

The issue with hydrogen is burning it results in water, what do you do with all that extra water on an aircraft? Venting it overboard at altitude will result in even larger contrails, which have a direct impact on climate as we know (the famous 9/11 example). Introducing water vapour into the upper atmosphere is effectively introducing a greenhouse gas up there, and that amount of extra moisture up there could cause all kinds of problems.

I'm basing all of the above on a recent online Eurocontrol lecture on the subject. They don't see any alternative to Kero/SAF for several decades for the majority of the industry.

How odd, these so caled potential owners cannot take there own case for access.

Its all a little disparate, seems to be holding out on closing a deal with the alleged "international funds"!

Hoping daa might up the bid if you ask me.

Why would he go to Court on the issue of connecting the lands to the rest of the airport if he no longer owned the site? Doesn't make sense to me.

And the DAA politely pouring cold water on the whole proposition of a third terminal on the site can't be helping the sellers to drive a hard bargain.

Residents protest this evening at FCC in swords over nighttime flights, flight paths and 32m passenger cap on track to be breached… 🙄

Agree completely. Time they were told to put a sock in it!!

I never understand the animosity towards residents affected by the airport expansion. They are contributors to the greater project, albeit passive contributors. I see no reason why they shouldn't have concerns addressed.

For me addressing residents concerns is a necessary part of the project that just can't be skimped on. It's so easy for unaffected people to go 'meh' but it doesn't make it right.

The point is that large swathes of the greater Dublin area are affected by the operation of the airport - and always have been. There are a lot more new homes being built on the northern fringes of the city than in the countryside but I'm not sure that these are the residents whose welfare we are hearing concerns about. Moving the noise footprint around to alleviate the disturbance in a largely rural area transfers it somewhere else and potentially affects more people. Issues such as the overall movements volume and the amount of activity during nighttime hours are being conflated with the North Runway noise issue. By all means there needs to be coherent and reasonable set of arrangements for the operation of Dublin Airport, but this should cater to the interests of the many, not the few.