Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

It's tempting to believe that a Minister such as you describe would simply say yes, but that would depend on a whole range of factors, including his/her political complexion and possibly including things like short-term political calculations rather than the longer-term view. Currently there is no role for politicians at any level in planning decisions. Over the years, Irish public administration has moved in the direction of having expert bodies with the right expertise to perform regulatory roles. Politicians' role is meant to be one of putting in place the policy and legislation and ideally that it how it should stay.

I don't know a whole lot about planning but things like local area development plans, stated Government policy/guidance and of course a raft of EU directives have to be taken into account. I am not defending FCC or ABP and I have to confess that I have not read the 753-page Planning and Development Bill 2023, which has been passed by the Dail and also by the Seanad, but has to return to the Dail for final consideration as the Seanad made amendments. However my understanding is that it will, amongst other things, reduce the potential for objections to planning applications. On the other hand, a scan of the list of the section headings in the Bill suggests that there is a huge range of facets to planning, so how much difference it will ultimately make I don't know.

In practice an issue like that would be brought to Government, and Ireland is going to have coalitions from now on. You can see where this might go….

True. Thanks for the reminder. 😐️

I would agree with a lot of what you say here. A 'minister for infrastructure' sounds great on paper but the reality is it would take about 10 years to build it into a proper department. The main stumbling block is that you have to take away powers from other departments and also the so-called minister for infrastructure would interact in so many other areas that it would almost be impossible. For instance we already have a department for transport and a national transport authority for Dublin and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, then we have all of the local authorities with their own interests. IMO TII should be the body that brings all of these together, not a Minister.

It will end up the same as our current Housing Minister where it looks good on paper and there is a designated responsible person (scapegoat) however it is the Local Authorities that deliver housing so he is pretty much irrelevant, but it looks like action is being taken.

We already have a structure in place for delivering infrastructure and nobody has suggested this could be improved by having a minister in place. There are so many other ways to speed things up, I really don't understand what a minister will do.

That's exactly my point. The Taoiseach has proposed/mooted it. He recognises that it's a huge issue and appointing a minister to it gives the impression that something is being done and it's being taken seriously. Same thing happened with the minister for housing…and we all see how effective that is!

The Shannon stopover was a matter of Government policy so a formula to phase it out was ultimately agreed at political level, despite the protestations of the Shannon lobby, which in ways continue to this day. It was also linked to the air agreements with the US and Canada so these had to be revised. As has been rehearsed repeatedly in this thread, the Dublin cap is a planning condition and, short of the establishment of a dictatorship, and frustrating as it is, can only be changed through the planning process. I have not seen a realistic alternative proposed here or elsewhere.

That's all fine for the future, as long as the planning legislation is amended to provide for such a system. In the meantime, the cap remains, unless it is undone or amended under the current planning laws. Whatever happens, no overnight solution appears likely. That's the context for my "dictatorship" reference.

This just about sums it up from a different forum

Congratulations to Manchester Airport on track for breaking through the 30m passenger benchmark. In the meantime Dublin Airport together with the Fingal County Council and Irish Government are doing their best to help you get there by insisting that an arbitrary Passenger Cap of 32m annual pax is implemented at Dublin, forcing airlines like Ryanair - Europe's Favourite Airline, Emerald Airlines, Etihad and Aer Lingus to move capacity elsewhere.

Why is the cap in place? Road Access
Are there traffic snarl ups at Dublin Airport? None at all
What about the 2m+ non-O&D transit pax at Dublin? Oh yes, include them in the Cap 🤯

None of this makes any sense
hashtag#CommercialSuicide

Adding buses in any significant volume is a real challenge right now due to the ongoing shortage of drivers across the industry.

But there should be some improvement with the addition of route 19 later this year between the Airport, Ballymun, Drumcondra and the City Centre as part of BusConnects.

the cap needs to be removed end of story. There shouldn’t be a new one set at 36m, 40m nor 45m. There should just be no passenger cap.

If there needs to be anything to manage numbers it should be based on runway capacity and terminal capacity, not external factors such as road networks beyond the daa’s control. We have established this practice is not fit for purpose. CAR have hourly terminal limits also.

Previously iirc the figure of 23m and then later 25m was used to trigger the north runway construction. Something similar could work for new piers and T3 down the road. Built when required. Everything in the infrastructure application however was needed yesterday rather than in 4/5 years time.

You may not have noticed it, but Manchester, Edinburgh and London have planners too. However, I'll grant you that they probably don't have the likes of FCC or our Transport minister and hie department.

The solution is not a free-for-all: it's sensible integrated planning and regulation, something which unfortunately seems to be beyond the incompetent bureaucracies with which we are saddled.

Anyone any idea why daa haven't applied for a removal/increase in the cap and keep saying that they will probably do so 'before the end of the year'?

Lack of strategic vision is one of the greatest failings of the Irish political system. It is probably a result of the competitive multi-seat constituency system, which encourages locally-focused "fixers" above true national leadership. The overall calibre of those who enter public life is arguably pretty low when you compare Ireland to many other EU countries. Significant professional achievement and/or intellectual capacity do not rank too highly when it comes to election to Dail Eireann and the bar in this regard has probably not risen in line with the drive for increased third-level participation of recent decades. Short-termism is the name of the game for the present Government, much as it has been for the last decade or so in particular. The public service does merit some criticism, but if the political system does not lead and attach value to strategic planning, it's not really going to be driven. The strategic stuff takes time and resources for little immediate demonstrable effect, and our political masters are mostly not keen on devoting scarce resources to a lot of such activity. These are amongst the factors that lead us the present "wicked problem" of the Dublin Airport cap, which is enmeshed in the unfit-for-purpose plannng system and which no one has yet identified a way of unravelling in the short-term.

I just don’t understand the logic of the cap resulting in restricted number of flights.

I see London City is increasing flights & numbers which is being proactive.

The British Government has approved London City Airport’s plans to increase its annual passenger cap from 6.5 million to 9 million passengers and to fly three extra flights in the first half hour of operations during the week.

However, the airport’s proposals to extend its operating hours on Saturdays – which would have boosted its leisure passenger traffic – has been rejected.

The airport currently closes at 12:30pm on Saturdays and after an extensive consultation process, the airport had requested a new closing time of 6:30pm that would have enabled more choice and flexibility for passengers.

Sorry I tried to paste the link but for some reason I cannot. I took this from www.ittn.ie

To be blunt - they are idiots.

What exactly do they think is currently stopping any airline that wants to start a route from Cork, Kerry, Shannon or Knock right now?

Get ryanair back to Waterford lol ( don't @ me I know the runway's too short )

It's almost as if they haven't learned any lessons from the Shannon Stopover nonsense of all those years ago.

We look f***ing stupid. Cap needs to go completely. Increasing it is not enough. We will just be in the same situation again in a year or two. Horrendously damaging to our long built up and hard won reputation.

How can any airline commit to long term growth here after this fiasco?

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0826/1466644-ryanair-adds-christmas-seats-to-belfast-due-to-dublin-cap/

The big "local access infrastructure" is Metro North. If/when that actually happens, but its far from a short term solution.

Surely this is largely the responsibility of TII, or Fingal CC? I can't see the latter doing anything to help Dublin Airport.