Council pushes back on Dublin Airport’s attempt to increase passenger cap to 36m
The environmental impact assessment is necessary, Fingal said, as the proposed Dublin Airport development 'is likely to have significant effects on the environment'. File picture
A Dublin local authority has pushed back on Dublin Airport’s attempt to increase its passenger cap to 36m people, saying it requires further information, a decision likely to significantly delay the application.
Fingal County Council has written to the airport’s administrator Daa to say that the proposed raising of the cap from its current level of 32m would require an environmental impact assessment and details of how additional traffic to the airport’s terminals would be accommodated, along with details of an updated capacity assessment to demonstrate that the airport can accommodate the higher passenger number.
The environmental impact assessment is necessary, Fingal said, as the proposed development “is likely to have significant effects on the environment”.
Fingal said that the increase of up to 36m passengers per year “will require a very substantial increase in bus services to and from Dublin Airport” and the airport is therefore “required to submit proposals for the further expansion and development” of the ground transportation centre at the site.
Those proposals must include a plan for how that expansion is to be implemented, with an estimated timeline for its completion, the local authority said.
Daa has six months to respond to the latest request.
A Daa spokesperson said it is “reviewing” Fingal’s request to “understand the scope and relevance of the information requested and its implications”.
Daa’s application for the 36m passenger cap was lodged last December as an intended complement to the ongoing outstanding application to raise the cap to 40m people.
The newer request in its original guise had two elements — first it said it would only come into effect subject to the pending ruling by An Bord Pleanála on the ‘relevant action’ taken by Daa seeking to normalise night-time flights at the airport; and second Daa proposed that passengers who transit the airport without entering a terminal will now be counted twice.
The latter stipulation would bring the airport’s methodology for counting passengers in line with that considered accepted practice by An Bord Pleanála — a stance the airport had been at odds with for several years.
However, the application was also lodged on a ‘no build’ basis — the cap would be raised without any significant infrastructural changes being required, thus reducing complexity and allowing the application to be processed in an expedited timeframe.
Daa has previously said the “original idea” for a 36m passenger cap had come Fingal County Council itself, and that the new cap was seen as a “short term solution” to the ongoing impasse surrounding the 40m passenger cap application, which remains outstanding with Fingal.
Fingal’s request for further information is likely to slow the process down significantly.
The application for a 40m cap is currently similarly mired, with Fingal stating it cannot move forward with that application until information requested by the authority’s noise regulator is delivered to it by Daa, a request first made in March 2024.
Daa has said it can not respond to that request until a decision is made by An Bord Pleanála regarding the relevant action.
The latest twist in the passenger cap story comes as the High Court ruled that the current 32m passenger cap should be suspended through summer 2025 pending the outcome of a challenge to the cap which has been referred to a EU court.
