Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

Yet somehow they're not flying in any great numbers to Shannon, Cork, or Knock. I wonder why that might be.

What I find most surprising is how sour everyone appears to be about this subject.

It's pretty damn obvious you can't answer Dublin's capacity issues with flights to regionals, people want to fly to Dublin, not Knock.

However, saying the market is non existent is equally as ignorant a view. In 2022 27 Million flew from Dublin, but another 5+ million flew from other airports in the republic.

Many other factors come into play, such as Ryanair historically hunting out any airline who tries to get a foothold.

Might be a legacy of when for decades the State effectively hijacked flights and forced them to fly somewhere they didn't want to.

The whining of Shannon et al is very hard to take after the wreckage that policy imposed on the economy of the whole island for the supposed benefit of one small part.

I admit, I didn't realise how big Fingal was, it stretchs all the way to Leixlip in the sw and also includes Howth and Sutton to the east. But it is still a major employer and supports many jobs and families locally, its hardly a strawman argument.

The Population of Limerick is 100k, the population of Tallaght alone is 68k

moving an airport to suit 100k is simply not viable

You do realise that that nonsensical post was made over ten years ago?

All threads about infrastructure in Dublin get a bit surreal. Posters who want less in Dublin and more elsewhere realised that simply going "F**k em. Dublin doesn't deserve it, they already get everything." doesn't cut it as an argument anymore. So they've shifted to pretending to be concerned for Dublin and suggest a solution that (by fortunate coincidence) involves government intervention to move things out of Dublin.

Hence we get claims like building Metrolink would "suffocate" Dublin. Or that allowing the airport to meet customer demand is a bad thing.

So, "a vast portion of" is not "most"? LOL.

Planning permission dictated the less than ideal usage of runways. At least the winter schedule is now in force, so traffic intensity is lower.

The planning permission for every single piece of infrastructure at that airport is a complete and utter joke.

An Emergency situation supercedes planning laws. This is enshrined in ICAO law, which is an arm of the UN. If an aircraft in an emergency elects to use a certain runway, or taxiway, or route etc, that is the decision of the aircraft commander, no ifs, buts or maybes.

But our decision-makers are so risk-averse that they will never take a controversial decision.

It's only fair that charges raised from passengers and frieght forwarders in Dublin are spent in Dublin.

Now if only we could apply that principle to taxes in general...!

So, the difference between "a vast portion of" and "most" is what you're hanging your "strawman" charge on. I'd call that nitpicking. 20,000 direct jobs out of 300,000 population isn't "a vast portion of" either. And not all the 20,000 workers live in Fingal. You can include the whole of North Dublin and chunks of Meath and Louth as well. So, the 20,000 direct jobs and further 20,000 indirect are from a population of easily double that at 600,000.