Joint Committee on Transport and Communications debate -
Wednesday, 19 Jun 2024

Apologies have been received from Deputy Lowry. The purpose of the meeting, as per the invitation, is for the joint committee to meet with representatives from the Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, to discuss summer plans and preparations for the holiday period. On behalf of the committee, I am pleased to welcome from DAA, Mr. Kenny Jacobs, chief executive officer; Mr. Gary McLean, managing director of Dublin Airport; and Mr. Niall MacCarthy, managing director of Cork Airport.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. I will not permit any member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Any member who attempts to participate from outside of the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm prior to making their contribution to the meeting that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

I invite Mr. Jacobs to make his opening statement or take us through his presentation.

I thank the Chairman. Our presentation will focus on the summer-readiness of Cork and Dublin. We are already in the middle of summer, from our point of view, so we will go through the key parts. Mr. MacCarthy will do Cork and Mr. McLean will do Dublin. I will do a general business update on a few other important topics, like the cap at Dublin Airport. We will use a presentation which we will get through in less than 15 minutes. The focus is on the basics of running two busy airports in the summer, on innovation across Dublin and Cork airports and the rest of DAA group, and on growth at Cork, Dublin and across our duty free business and international business.

A couple of weeks ago we had our AGM and issued our full-year results for 2023. We are very satisfied with the operational, commercial and financial performance of DAA Group. We had in excess €1 billion in revenue for the first time ever. We contributed €153 million in taxes to the Exchequer. We are happy we are paying a €31 million dividend to the State in 2023.

Managing debt continues to be an issue for every airport group. We took on about €1 million debt per day during the pandemic as airports were nearly shut around Europe. We are still sitting on €815 million in debt that we need to work through. We put a dent in that last year and need to continue to do that. We are driving efficiency across the business and facing cost headwinds. Ireland is an expensive place to do business. Driving non-aero revenue for us means selling more car parking spaces, lounges, fast-track, duty free products, foods and beverages and everything else we can sell to passengers at Dublin and Cork.

We have a huge focus on improving service quality for passengers. Mr. MacCarthy and Mr. McLean will describe that in greater detail for Cork and Dublin. We are satisfied with the situation in Cork Airport; 95% of passengers are satisfied with the airport. In Dublin there has been a huge improvement. In 2023, passengers in Dublin were 37% more satisfied than in the previous year. That is a big increase. Cork is at 95% and Dublin Airport is at around an 85% customer satisfaction rate, both very high for European airports. A big mission we have is to give passengers a very consistent and resilient experience at both airports so people can go on holidays or business trips and the airport never gets in their way.

We are driving domestic and international growth. We are planning a Cork Airport that can service demand of passengers up to 5 million. We plan to expand Dublin Airport to 40 million with the infrastructure application we lodged in December of last year. We are managing growth through a portfolio of duty free operations. In 27 airports around the world, we run duty free shops and we also run three terminals in three airports in Saudi Arabia. We are proud to fly the flag for Irish aviation in other parts of the world from an operational and duty free point of view. Dublin and Cork airports are our bread and butter. That is where we need to get it right for our core constituents - the citizens of Ireland who are passengers at those airports.

We are investing in people. We are satisfied to have done a three-year pay deal that the vast majority of our staff voted in favour of. Relationships are in a good place. The staff surveys we do indicate our staff are happy. I believe if you want to get it right for passengers, you have to get it right for staff. We will continue to make investments in entry levels and all levels of pay. That three-year pay deal would not have been agreed by staff if they were not happy with it. There is a big focus on training and a big improvement in retention. Retention of staff in Dublin and Cork airports in critical roles has never been better. It is about 5%, much healthier than most retail businesses around the country and other airports. We are satisfied with that.

Challenges remain. The 32 million cap at Dublin is a great concern. We are doing everything we can to comply with the cap but we are worried the system may force us into a breach. It is too early to say. Ironically, the potential Aer Lingus strikes will help with compliance because they could take out a chunk of passengers in the summer depending on the shape they take. Managing debt and rising costs are ongoing challenges, as are transforming into a zero carbon business by 2050 and reducing emissions by 51% by 2030. Aviation, airports and airlines need to do more but we are on that mission and absolutely believe in it. We want to build and that will improve emissions at Dublin Airport. Ultimately, the same will happen at Cork Airport.

That is a general introduction to where we are at on basics, innovation and growth, which is what our airport group is all about. I will hand over to Mr. MacCarthy, who will provide an update on Cork Airport.

I am managing director of Cork Airport. I am wholly accountable and responsible for efficient and safe operations in Cork Airport, reporting directly to Mr. Jacobs with the management team in Cork. It is a pleasure to be here.

Cork Airport, pictured in the presentation, is a clean, modern, well-maintained building. We pride ourselves on that. Some members have had the pleasure of travelling through Cork. Senator Dooley may have had that pleasure, as he resides locally. It is very nice. It is akin to terminal 2 in Dublin Airport. Our hard-working maintenance team is also pictured. There it is in winter operations mode, cleaning snow and whatever. We have a good maintenance team and staff at the airport.

We have 48 service routes. It is hard to see on the slide, but they are the pink dots across Ireland, the UK and continental Europe. We have three new routes this year, namely, Brussels Charleroi, Rhodes in Greece and Zadar in Croatia. In a smaller airport hub connectivity is important. What is a hub? It is a bigger airport where travellers can connect, largely to long-haul routes. We as a small region will not have daily flights to Dubai or Istanbul, so people need to get to a hub to travel to those places. We fly 28 times a week to Heathrow and 14 times a week, twice a day, to Amsterdam, which is an emerging hub for us and is really popular with passengers. We also fly to three other hubs in continental Europe, including Charles de Gaulle. This year we will grow by 7%. We will proudly handle 3 million passengers. That is a 50% increase since 2015. We have 40,000 flights per annum. That is almost evenly split between commercial and non-commercial flights. Commercial flights are big aircraft flying people in and out on their holidays. We also have a flight training school, Atlantic Flight Training Academy, at the airport and quite a lot of the non-commercial flights are training new pilots. We also have search and rescue, Irish military, coastguard and medical evacuation flights. The non-commercial flights are hugely important to the region. We have eight scheduled carriers. The ones carrying the bulk of our passengers are Aer Lingus and Ryanair, but we have diversified significantly. We have Air France flying to Charles de Gaulle, KLM flying to Schiphol, Lufthansa flying to Frankfurt and SWISS, Emerald and TUI flying to other destinations.

I assure the committee Cork Airport is well prepared for summer 2024. We take it very seriously every year. We have a detailed plan for the summer that we finalise in January. The plan itself is about 40 pages and we go through everything. I will quickly run through it. We are quite seasonal. Most airports are. Our July and August traffic is about twice what the January and February traffic is, so different levels of staffing are needed in the summer compared with the winter. We take on seasonal summer staff, especially in the car parks, retail and security. The complexity in airports is they have to be background-vetted by the Garda, so we cannot just hire them on a Monday to start on the Tuesday. They have to wait for maybe five weeks before they get their background clearance and start work. We are fully staffed for summer.

A total of 95% of our passengers will get through in less than 15 minutes. In the afternoons, people get through in five minutes. When it is quite busy, they get through in ten minutes, and the first wave peak is 15 minutes. That is all electronically monitored and independently recorded, so we do not give those times as they are electronically read. Everything in the car park is within a five-minute walk. We have three car parks, namely, blue, red and multistorey. We will never tell people to come to the airport more than 90 minutes before departure. As a matter of fact, people will make it at 60 minutes, but over the summer it is probably a bit tight, but we will give, and have given, a summer advisory of 90 minutes. We have four restaurants, two separate coffee docks, including an executive lounge, and we are opening a new unit, Roasted Notes, on 8 July.

I am conscious of time, so I will move through fairly quickly. We pride ourselves on cleanliness. Red C surveys our passengers independently. They are asked a set of questions like how was security, cleaning and friendliness of staff. We get 91% on cleaning. It is a clean terminal. We offer free-of-charge disability services for people with reduced mobility. We have a lanyard scheme for people with hidden disabilities. We have a sensory room for autistic children travelling with families and we have an assisted guide dog scheme. We are a green airport. I am really proud of this one. SEAI is the authority in Ireland for sustainability. Cork Airport is the best-performing commercially owned body – not airport, body – in the country out of I think 80 when it comes to carbon reduction. On overall satisfaction, again by Red C, we won best regional airport in Europe in 2017 and 2019 and we score between 94% and 95% satisfaction.

We are at the last slide. We have great staff. I am very proud of them. They are friendly and work hard. We have a lot of electronics in the building. Using my phone I can tell how many taxis are outside right this minute as they are electronically counted. I can see the number of people in the immigration and security queue right here right now. All of our staff have access to high technology. The screen that says we expect travellers to be five minutes in the queue is predictive analytics, not somebody typing in a number. I am showing real photos of the terminal. They have not been Photoshopped. That is how clean the floors are and we pride ourselves on that. There is a photo of Cork Airport winning best regional airport in Europe back in 2019. We might be able to convince Deputies O’Rourke, Smith, Farrell and Kenny to travel down to Cork for their summer holidays this year.

Good afternoon. I thank everyone for their time. As Mr. Jacobs said and Mr. MacCarthy alluded to, we are focused on running a consistent, smooth operation at Dublin Airport. I work with a team of more than 2,000 people who are dedicated to delivering 24-7 that consistent experience and making it the best it can possibly be. In an airport like Dublin, there is, as members can imagine, a lot going on. There are many twists and turns on any given day and our team respond magnificently to them. What we are there for is to work with our partners and stakeholders to ensure the passenger experience is as positive as it can be at each point in time.

Naturally for a summer period, which is the busiest part of our year, we do a lot of planning. As Mr. Jacobs alluded to, we were very keen to make a step-change from a really positive year last year into the year ahead. Passengers have great choice in Dublin Airport and more choice than ever. There are 2,600 departing flights each week across 45 airlines, with more than 200 flights a week to the United States. We are the fifth-best connected hub in Europe to the US, which is something we are very proud of and which is aligned to the national aviation policy we will really focus on improving. Already this year we have had a really busy but positive start to the summer. In May, more than 3 million passengers passed through Dublin Airport. We had the busiest day ever for transfer passengers and the busiest day yet for departing passengers for the US. That part of the business continues to grow and is a key focus of ours.

May was a really successful month for us and that was shown when we managed the additional traffic that came with the Europa League final. In excess of 20,000 fans came and went from Dublin within a short period of time. We had the teams, UEFA delegates and their guests. We managed more than 70 additional aircraft during those few days, which totalled more than 150 additional movements and everyone had a really positive experience coming in and going out through the airport. That proved we are ready for what is coming at us in the summer ahead. I thank all the staff for the work so far in managing in May and everyone is focused on continuing to deliver that through the summer ahead as we welcome in excess of 10 million passengers over the peak months.

Similar to Mr. MacCarthy, we have done a lot of work on the summer ahead. All of our teams have worked together with our stakeholders and listened to our passengers. We had a passenger forum earlier in the year where we took feedback from them and fed it into our summer plans. I will not go through it all, but at a high level we have resources. We have recruited more than 300 within my areas in advance of the summer season. We are managing well through those peaks at the moment and we will continue to do that through the summer. Our commitment is to have 90% of passengers through security in under 20 minutes and we are running in excess of 95% through in under 20 minutes so far this year. That is in addition to managing a really challenging project within the space. I am sure members are aware of the benefits that will come both from a security compliance and a passenger experience point of view with our new C3 technology and our body scanners, but implementing that is not without its challenges. We have 14 scanners operational, with ten in terminal 2 and four in terminal 1. That means more people rather than fewer will go through the new scanners as they pass through the airport this summer. We are continuing to roll that out in terminal 2. We have paused terminal 1 for the next number of months because of how busy it is and the fact we need to reinforce floors as part of the installation of the next units. We obviously cannot do that in the busy summer period.

As part of the review we are focused on all our passenger types. It is an airport for all, as it says in the slide. We have introduced a new autism-friendly sensory room in terminal 1 to add to the terminal 2 room, which has been really well-used and well-received. We have also refurbished it. We have looked at our family experience and introduced entertainment on all our piers for families.

We have really focused on the standards and the basics, as Mr. Jacobs alluded to previously. This includes our cleaning standards and allocating more hours to that. Also included are things that passengers want. Regarding additional seating, this is always a challenge in the airport but we have added 350 more seats. We have also added additional charter facilities and all those basics passengers want across their journey. A lot of work, which is not necessarily visible to passengers, has also been going on around the airfield performance as well. The new runway has been in place now for almost two years. This will get greater efficiency out of the airport and result in better performance in the system overall as we roll out our services for this summer.

Similar to Mr. MacCarthy, we are always seeking to innovate and improve. I will not go through all the factors in this regard, but I can summarise them. Our passengers have told us that they want to be more in control and have more choice. Our new app and better Wi-Fi allow them to be more in control as they move through the airport. Passengers have also looked for additional choice and different products. We are introducing and have introduced new products like valet parking, new and better lounges and more choices and varieties across those. As I mentioned, passengers have also called for a better passenger experience, so we are focusing on improvements across the terminal, improved look and feel for our lobbies, improved wayfinding, new toilets and toilets being moved from landside to airside to increase capacity in some constrained areas. Without going through all the work under way, many improvements have been made and the team is very much focused on and dedicated to driving a better experience for passengers this summer.

We are also very much focused on how passengers get to and from the airport. We have seen an increase in people using public transport and we are working with our partners and the national authorities to continue to increase the focus on how people access the airport. A reduced level of traffic has been seen around the airport as a result of this modal switch. Additionally, we have focused on increasing our bus connectivity. We will have more than 1,000 bus movements daily this summer and, for the first time, connectivity to all 32 counties on the island. This provides much more choice and variety to people.

Our car parks are busy. We have exhausted all options to add additional spaces. Our focus as a team, therefore, is on managing what we have and managing it well to ensure people have a positive experience as they use our car parks. We are recommending that people book early, however, because the availability of car parking will sell out at peak times. We are seeing this even with the weekend ahead, so this is key. We are also working with our taxi permit holders. Last year, we increased the number of these permits and we have continued to maintain the number we feel is required to meet the needs of passengers at the airport.

In summary, we had a very good start to the year. We have a team that is really focused on providing the best possible experience for our passengers day in and day out and 24-7. We will work with all our stakeholders and continue to evolve our plans to ensure we deal with whatever changes may occur and come at us during the summer. I thank members for their time.

I thank Mr. McLean and Mr. MacCarthy. I think the members of the committee can hear where we are at with the basics. The focus is absolutely on the passengers. The DAA is all about the passengers, our most important stakeholder. To service passengers with a really good airport experience, we need to have staff who are well motivated and well trained in delivering on the big days. Last Sunday, there were nearly 120,000 passengers at Dublin Airport. That was a huge day. If the airport had 120,000 passengers every day, it would be operating services for more than 40 million passengers annually. Showing it can do that is down to the team. These are the people operating the security lanes, cleaning the airport, running the car parks, driving the buses, those on the airside, those in what we call the APOC, those ensuring all aircraft are coming to a stand and doing everything properly. These are the real heroes in the organisation who can get through a day like we experienced last Sunday in Dublin Airport, and similar days in Cork Airport, and just get passengers on the way with a smile on their faces.

I will quickly canter through a few other topics. On sustainability, this remains an important mission for us. It really does underpin everything we do. Recently, we announced the opening of a solar farm that will provide 10% of our energy needs. We are very happy with that. We are also looking at other options that would further improve the situation and make us self-sufficient from an energy perspective. In the area of alternative fuels, we are increasing our use of renewables and what we are doing with waste. Regarding the sustainable aviation fuel, SAF, support we have in place, we are part of the national council on SAF. There is nothing stopping SAF coming to Dublin Airport and being used there today. We remain absolutely focused on reducing our emissions by 51% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. Nothing has changed in the plan we signed up to. We are looking at this goal, at new things we can do and at our delivery in this area every week. We need to build to reduce emissions because terminal 1 is very old and it is a critical part of our infrastructure application.

We are listening. We are listening locally in the Fingal area. In a wider context, we are listening in Dublin, Leinster and nationally. I have been out to the local community six times in the past year, to households very near the runways where noise is a serious issue. I have met the key groups involved at the airport, including the St. Margaret's group, the Dublin Airport Environmental Working Group, DAEWG, and the Community Liaison Group, CLG. Overall, during the last year, we have had 100 community visits. Four community liaison group meetings have been completed this year. We are actively listening in the community, not just in Fingal. We have met with representatives from east Meath. I will visit the county over the summer, including places like Ratoath and Ashbourne, to hear people's concerns, listen to the noise is and communicate with people. We want to take a wider view in the community we are engaging with.

At a national level, 65% of people in Ireland support the further development at Dublin Airport, while 73% agree that Dublin Airport should be able to grow passenger numbers for Ireland's connectivity. Locally, in the Fingal area, 84% acknowledge the airport's contribution to the local economy and 77% support future expansion needs. We are engaging with Fingal County Council. I will meet the new councillors who have been elected in the coming months. We were in the council chamber in the last six months. We are sending a bimonthly newsletter to Fingal and getting feedback, and we will continue to actively engage. At the meeting before last, I think mention was made at this committee of the community viewing area we have been working on. Members will have seen that we have committed a planning application for this viewing platform and it will be a great local initiative. We are listening. We can never say we have done enough listening. We will continue to listen in Fingal, Dublin and beyond to hear from the local community. Noise is serious and we take it very seriously. We want to look at everything we can do to take noise away. Emissions are serious and being a good neighbour is something we are very much committed to.

Specifically on the subject of noise, we now have more than 20 fixed and temporary noise monitoring stations. We have completed the insulation of more than 160 homes and 38 more homes are eligible for insulation. More important, within the relevant action with An Bord Pleanála, we have 660 more homes that could be included for insulation, which is very good.

Regarding the buy-out scheme, 38 homes are eligible for it. We are actively engaging with the owners. This involves buying them out at market value plus 25%.

Flight paths can evolve and we are actively looking at them. We are responsible for the flight paths. We devolve this responsibility to AirNav and, ultimately, the IAA signs off on flight paths. If there is a better flight path out there that will remove noise from the system, we will implement it. I referred specifically to removing noise from the system because this is not just about moving noise from over community A to community B. It is about whether we can remove noise from the system entirely. We are looking at this possibility with our flight operations teams, AirNav and the IAA. By the end of the year, I hope we will have a view on whether there is a better flight path out there that will take noise away. If there is, we will look at implementing it in a practical way in conjunction with AirNav and the IAA.

The underpass was spoken about when representatives of Ryanair were before the committee. We are convinced of this project. We do not see Dublin Airport operating in future without it. The key point for me is that we want to start thinking about and planning for Dublin Airport in the years 2040 and 2050. I do not see there being an efficient and safe Dublin Airport when we would be operating at 45 million passengers, and above, without an underpass. Underpasses like the one we plan to build exist in Madrid, Barcelona, Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol and Frankfurt airports, as well as many other large hub airports. Many of our other airline customers support this project and we need it.

We will never stop doing everything we can to try to take away noise. The best things to do are to insulate homes, buy out those very near the runways and incentivise the operation of newer and greener aircraft. We are looking to reduce the charges by 25% for airlines with those types of aircraft. We will continue to do this.

I am worried about the passenger cap. We have done everything we can to comply and we are still only halfway through the year. We abstained from the slot process last year. We brought proposals to the slot committee on reducing the number of ad hoc movements but the airlines did not vote for them. We welcome the new decision made by the IAA on the passenger parameter being introduced for the passenger cap.

That will give us a platform for compliance in 2025. We wish that had been taken a little sooner because it would have helped with this summer. However, I am concerned that we will be forced into a breach of the 32 million passenger cap because not enough has been done.

As the committee is aware, and as we explained the last time we were here, we do not control the passenger number with a tap. The passenger number is determined by the slot process, which is governed and regulated by the IAA. Obviously, the airlines want as many slots as possible. Many airlines have contacted us in the past six months. I have advised ten airlines that while I cannot stop them from applying for slots, if they get them in 2024, they may not keep them in 2025 and that if I was one of these airlines, I would think twice. We are satisfied that we have done everything we can to comply with the passenger cap. There are six months left in the year, so we will see what happens.

The Aer Lingus strikes, if they happen and I hope they do not, could take a number of passengers out of the mix. That would not be good for Irish aviation and it would be terrible for anyone who has holidays booked with Aer Lingus but it would help towards compliance. I am confident that we have done everything we can to comply with the passenger cap but I fear we may be forced into a breach at the end of the year.

The charges are still not high enough, even at €9.20 per passenger. Ryanair stated last week that the charges are going up by 45%. They are not going up by 45%. There is a bigger chance of us operating an airport on the moon than there is that charges will go up by 45%. The charges are regulated, and looking at 2025, 2026 and 2027, we think they will go up in line with inflation. Dublin Airport is still the lowest charging capital city airport in Europe. We want a modest increase in charges. What would we do with such a modest increase? We would put all of it back into passengers at Dublin Airport. We want faster queues, a better airport and permanent resilience for passengers at the airport.

Rounding off and in summary, Ireland and any part of infrastructure need to get better at looking at 2050 and long-term planning. Davy this morning published a point of view on population growth in Ireland. Looking at it in the past five years, population growth here was under-called by about 10%. As a result of population growth, Dublin Airport will need to be able to accommodate more than 40 million passengers by 2040 and close to 50 million passengers by 2050. Not everybody likes or welcomes that. I also see bigger growth at Cork Airport and potential for significant growth at Shannon Airport. I hope that along the way aviation, between airlines, the DAA and the whole system, will come up with alternative energy sources that will power aircraft.

Ireland is a small open economy and connectivity is essential. We have a young and growing population. We see transportation and flight demand very much increasing. The DAA wants to get ahead of it and get better at planning for the future in Dublin and Cork airports. We are thinking about the airports we need at Dublin and Cork in 2050, what they will look like and what capacity they will be able to serve.

Cork and Dublin airports are ready. That is down to the teams we have. We are very proud of our teams, the way they work and the delivery we have had for passengers in the past year. We are in the summer. We could not deliver a UEFA Europa League final or a 120,000 passenger day such as we had in Dublin last Sunday without the team being really up for it. We are very proud of what it does.

Outside of Ireland, we have a good international business. We run duty free shops in 27 airports around the world. We run three big terminals in Saudi Arabia and we want to run more. We are very happy to fly the Irish flag in aviation around the world as well as doing a very good job for passengers here.

We have a sharp focus on improving the little things. That is what it is really about when it comes to a good airport. We continue to work closely with the IAA and we welcome its recent decision it issued on the passenger parameter. While that will help us to comply with the cap, I am concerned that we may be forced into a breach later in the year. Airport growth and improved sustainability can go hand and hand. We want to build at Dublin Airport to reduce emissions there because terminal 1 is very old in parts. We also want to support the connectivity needs of Ireland. Cork and Dublin airports play a huge role in Ireland's economy. Combined, they support over €10 billion in economic value-added activity and we want that to continue.

Ireland is great at aviation. It is great to go to different parts of the world and have people say we have Aer Lingus, Ryanair, Dublin Airport, Cork Airport and Shannon Airport. Ireland invented duty-free business in the form of Aer Rianta. We are very good at this. Dublin and Cork airports need to be a showcase for the world to come to and say that these guys are great at running airlines and airports. That is what we want to bring to the rest of the world. I thank the committee and look forward to questions.

I thank Mr. Jacobs very much. He had five minutes and took half an hour. Hopefully, many of the points we might otherwise have raised as questions have been covered. I will give everyone seven minutes with a one minute wrap-up and we might get a second round of questions. We must finish by 3.30 p.m. so I ask members not to be repetitive and keep the discussion moving.

I thank Mr. Jacobs for his presentation. As a TD for Meath East, he will appreciate if I focus on noise mitigation and planning updates. Mr. Jacobs mentioned that the way to deal with noise is to insulate homes. Another way, of course, is to design flight paths that do not pass over homes, are appropriately assessed and are planning compliant. He will be aware that there are specific proposals from the community for alternative flight paths that could achieve just that for the north runway. Has the north runway as it currently operates been environmentally assessed? Have environmental impact and noise assessments been done? My understanding is that a planning application was submitted in 2007 and while assessments were done at that stage, entirely different flight paths are operating at this stage which are impacting on homes and communities. Mr. Jacobs mentioned Ratoath and Ashbourne, for example. There are other communities which were never intended to be overflown.

I thank Deputy O'Rourke. I will make an opening comment and then ask Mr. McLean to make a few points.

It is important to note that planning does not govern flight paths, so flight paths were not part of the planning process. The flight paths for the north runway were consulted on in 2016, not 2007. The operations of the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority, ANCA, which is the regulator for noise, will cover both runways in any year and in every regard. ANCA is responsible and we work closely with it with regard to what the noise contours are and where there is noise.

On the communities, Mr. McLean and I have met the Ashbourne pilots group and we think there are a few interesting proposals there. We will take those away and look at them in the appropriate way because we have to look at what is practical and what can be implemented. We have to bear in mind the Weston and Baldonnel air facilities, and even the movement of An Garda Síochána helicopters in the airspace around the airport.

I am confident that if there is a better flight path that can work, we will find and implement it. That will take some time because we are in a very busy summer period and it is a busy airspace. It is not just about moving noise from above community A to above community B. The challenge we want to take on is to remove noise from the system. That is our objective. Different pilots will have different views. An Aer Lingus pilot might say that doing this or that on a missed approach would remove noise, while a Ryanair pilot might say something different. We have to do this in conjunction with the AirNav Ireland and the IAA. We have met ]the pilot group from Ashbourne and we want to take ideas on board and make adjustments if we can.

For example, Mr. Jacobs stated specifically, and I find this counterintuitive, that an additional 660 homes will become eligible for insulation if planning is approved for the relevant action and that 38 homes will be eligible for a buy-out. That indicates that this is directly related to the operation of the current flight paths. We know that an additional seven acres have come in, according to the further information Mr. Jacobs provided. Is it not the case that these developments are directly related to planning and that there is a planning element to it?

There is a planning dimension to it. The 38 homes eligible for the buy-out are outside the relevant action that is currently with An Bord Pleanála.

We have put the 660 homes into the relevant action available for insulation. We are waiting for new contours work to come from ANCA, the noise regulator, that will determine where in its view the noise is at a level that insulation should be part of things. We can take it down to decibels. There is a standard metric that measures noise and transportation infrastructure. Typically, from the monitoring that we do, Ashbourne would be 40 dB and east Meath is in the low 40s to mid-40s. A noise level of 63 dB is where one would insulate. At over 69 dB, we would consider buy-out. Noise is a very serious issue, but we do not think the noise we monitor is at a level where insulation and buy-out come onto the table in east Meath. However, if the regulator says they do, we will follow that.

Mr. Jacobs will accept that some people will strongly contest how those measurements are made and averaged out. He has indicated that he will go to Ashbourne and Ratoath to meet residents there. Other Deputies and Senators in this committee will hear practically on a daily basis of monitoring that is well in excess of what ANCA or others will report. That needs to be acknowledged and responded to.

I am acknowledging it and we want to respond. As it is a regulated area, we will follow what ANCA tells us to do based on its measurements in terms of where it thinks there needs to be insulation based on the contours. I will go out to east Meath because I want to hear it. Closer to the airport, I have been in households where I thought noise was a problem inside the house and outside the house. We take it very seriously.

We are happy that the flight paths are compliant with what was consulted in 2016. We have an open mind about an improvement in flight paths. It is important to note that we are responsible for flight paths. Mr. McLean, as the responsible executive, is responsible for the flight paths. If there is a better flight path out there, we will consult to see what that is. Ultimately, we want to remove noise from the system and not just move noise from one place to another.

The DAA is dealing with its own operations department, the IAA and AirNav. Is it not the case that AirNav does not have the skills in-house to look at parallel runways? It has been part of the problem here. Are there not others that DAA could and should consult on the operation of the aerodrome and the north runway?

We have great respect for AirNav. It is a busy airport and AirNav does a really good job. We are very satisfied with the competence and capabilities in AirNav. Ultimately the challenge we are taking on is that if there is a better flight path, we are responsible. We will find one if there is a better one. We will do that in consultation with AirNav and the IAA.

Mr. Jacobs has said that DAA is engaging with AirNav to determine how a consultation process could be run in the future and potentially provide scope to explore suggestions with communities. I firmly believe that DAA does not just need to consult with the IAA and AirNav, but that it also needs to consult with those community groups. There is expertise within the community, including based on the Ashbourne pilot group or the possibility of dependent runway operations.

We have met with the groups the Deputy mentioned, but we have also met with others to look at different things. Safety has been the number one priority when it came to the design of the flight paths. We are open to understanding the impacts and how we can look at that into the future. Our presentation outlined a process to provide a voice to everyone. If we just listen to one group, we might move the perceived problem from one place to another. We want to have an open consultative process which allows everyone to have a voice initially and then allows us to work with consultants and experts in the airspace design. It is done in conjunction with AirNav but ultimately we will need to contract with airspace designers to understand the implications not just for noise but for safety and other measures, including environmental measures, regarding the proposals we have already received and any other ideas people will have.

I am engaged with other airports that have run similar processes in the past. Obviously, no two airports are at the same. We are working through that to try to scope it out. We do not have a definitive timeframe but we are committed to try to scope that out, get the team on board, engage with communities and other interested parties, including airlines and users, and then come back with a proposal which is joined up and hopefully takes a balanced approach to that.

I thank the witnesses for being here today. I have quite a few questions and I will go through them quickly if possible. Mr. Jacobs said that DAA wants to get ahead of it all. I think he was talking about the pressures of the cap and everything else. Does he feel that Dublin Airport Authority has rushed in, got ahead of the Government's plan, blindsided the Government even, by getting its planning application into the system before the national aviation policy is looked at? Ireland is not just about one airport on the east coast; there are many more airports. There is Shannon in my constituency, Cork and Knock. The national aviation policy looks comprehensively at all Irish airports. Has DAA got ahead of all that process by putting its planning application in before that even begins?

No, in fact the opposite is the case; I wish we had done it sooner. Based on the annual passenger numbers at Dublin, we should have submitted a planning application years ago. Waiting for the national aviation policy would mean that we would be turning away connectivity, turning away demand and costing jobs at Dublin Airport for a number of years. I am very glad that we submitted the infrastructure application in December 2023. If anything, I would have preferred if we had done that sooner.

Why would DAA not have waited for the national aviation policy review to take place? Last week we heard from Michael O'Leary that DAA had been to the Minister and is awaiting a decision from him. His own political future has rather changed in the past 24 hours. If all of that is happening, why go in quickly? As a semi-State body, why would DAA go in ahead of the State with an application?

I do not think we have gone in quickly. If anything, we have gone in late. The demand from airlines and passengers is greater than the cap. If we did not have a cap of 32 million at Dublin Airport today and airlines could come to us looking for a deal on slots, Dublin Airport could already be at 35 million or 36 million. If we were waiting for the national aviation policy, we could have a four-year period where Dublin Airport is turning away connectivity to airports like Manchester, Gatwick and Edinburgh, which are now actively marketing to airlines saying that Dublin is stuck and they should come to them. That would just move jobs to those airports. That would be the worst possible thing for Irish aviation and the worst possible thing for jobs - existing real jobs rather than future jobs to be created. If anything, I wish we had gone with the infrastructure application sooner.

As I said, flight paths are not governed by planning. Noise is governed by ANCA, which is based in the same building as Fingal County Council. It is a totally independent regulator. Noise is regulated. We are required to follow that regulation on noise, but flight paths are not governed by planning.

The Deputy would need to let me know what those planning conditions are. We are saying that we want to comply and we are turning away business. We are encouraging airlines not to come to Dublin because if they were to get slots, they might not keep them. Planning is the law as far as I am concerned and we want to comply with planning. The only way that I can see the cap being lifted is through planning.

I seem to recall that the last day Mr. Jacobs appeared before the committee, he said that at the Christmas period DAA would get very close to the 32 million cap. Who will be the fall guy? Will it be the incidental charter flights? Will it be Ryanair? Will it be Aer Lingus? Who is DAA in talks with, cautioning them about their flights? Will people even get home for Christmas?

It is very important that everybody hears this message: everybody will get home for Christmas. I know there was some excitement that flights would be cancelled. Ryanair and all the airlines have been told that what they had last winter they will keep this winter.

The historic slots will continue in the winter of 2024, so no one needs to worry about not being able to get home at Christmas. The airlines will not get everything new they are looking for, but everything they had, they will keep. Will there be a fall guy coming to the end of the year? Let us wait and see and see what the number looks like. I am concerned now because there is great demand from the airlines. We are tracking ahead of it. IAA governs the slots and that is what determines the passenger numbers. Different airlines might do different things. Ryanair has already said publicly that it will not be adding aircraft in Dublin. That is because it cannot get them into get new slots. Aer Lingus is, unfortunately, looking at some potential strikes. That might take passengers away. However, I am concerned we will be forced into a breach because too many airlines want too many slots. In global aviation, the world does not understand why there is a passenger cap in Dublin Airport because there generally are not caps elsewhere in the world. Airlines now want to pile into Dublin because it is a good place to be, the charges are low and they know it will be capped for a number of years.

I understand the job Mr. Jacobs has to do. He has to run Dublin Airport and Cork Airport. He is here to speak for them. However, when he speaks about sustainability, is it not a bit incongruent, perhaps disingenuous, to talk about sustainability at a time when it is unsustainable to have all these flights coming out of Dublin without adding an extra brick, pane of glass or iron reinforcement rod in Shannon Airport? It could double its capacity. Cork Airport also says it can take more. Why would we invest everything in one airport to the detriment of others?

She can, and that was part of the conversation we had. I am a great believer in all Irish airports. I would love Shannon Airport to grow and I see some potential flights that could move to Shannon. We have a very big plan for growing Cork Airport by 40% and we want to grow Dublin Airport. We want to grow our two airports to meet the transportation needs of Ireland. I wish Shannon Airport the best of luck. If some capacity can move to Shannon Airport - it might be possible - we will be talking to Ms Considine and her team about it happening.

I am hopeful, but I am a glass half-full person, that we can get the €40 million application approved within two years. I hope that is a realistic timeframe but I am not an expert on planning. On the other methods he spoke about, there are views out there that you can have a ministerial directive and there can be litigation, but that is for other people. We are focused on planning. Planning is the law. I only see the cap being lifted by planning, that is, the €40 million infrastructure application being granted.

We may consider an operational application. We may build nothing but submit an application to Fingal County Council to have greater operational flexibility and be able to operate to a number beyond 32 million with the cap being lifted without building anything. We are solely focused on planning being the only route for DAA to have the cap lifted. We are not looking at the other routes and I hope planning can work within two years.

There are airlines selling bargain basement airfares out of Dublin Airport and other Irish airports. Parking charges at Dublin Airport far exceed any city centre car park at the moment. They are €40 per day in the short-term car park - that is a capped price - and €16.50 per day in the express red and €14 per day in the holiday blue car parks. From a consumer point of view, are they not huge prices? People still have to go a long way to the terminals. When we want people to fly in and out of Ireland - we all have certain preferences where they might fly in and out of - at the very least, from a consumer point of view is it not somewhat ludicrous that it is more expensive to park a car on the tarmac than to take to the skies and fly to an international country?

We look at the charges compared with downtown. For example, I will leave my car in the Setanta car park for four hours and I will pay more than €20, so we benchmark against downtown car parking prices and we are always cheaper for both short and long-term parking. The Deputy will be aware that we are stuck for car park spaces. I wish we had more for the summer but we do not. It is up to us to manage them well. I am thankful that passengers using Dublin Airport have heeded our advice to book early. The earlier they book, the better value they will get.

I will touch more on the operational side because we have quite a few local TDs who will touch on the runway, noise and so forth. Regarding the Aer Lingus strike, it will be its passengers who suffer, but with respect to how the airport handles a strike, there will be a lot of planes on the ground that would not normally be there clogging up the place and there will be a backlog the next day. What challenges will Dublin Airport have if the strike goes ahead, which we all hope it will not?

We are already fully engaged with Aer Lingus around potential scenarios. No one knows exactly how it will play out yet. The Senator is right that, depending on the scenarios, we will have a lot more aircraft on the ground and additional challenges around facilitating those aircraft while continuing to manage everything else efficiently. We are working through those scenarios and we will look at areas in which aircraft can be parked in a way that, should they be needed quickly, that can be managed. We have those detailed scenarios and we are working with Aer Lingus day in, day out on that. However, until we know exactly how it will play out, it is hard to-----

Exactly. From our point of view, we are managing security and the other elements of it. We are keen to ensure we understand the impact on either side of that day or event. We are looking at the entire ecosystem to ensure we look after all our passengers or customers, while working with Aer Lingus to work through its challenge as well.

I happened to be on two reasonably late night flights not long ago. I understand there has to be a wind down, but there were big signs up saying duty free flight and then the duty free zone was shut. The bar started to close. It was great for time spent at security. I flew through it. Is there a way to keep anything, such as the shops, open a little longer for those who are using the later flights? It makes sense to sweat the asset. DAA wants planes to leave at all hours, not all at 6 a.m. It is good they are going, but passengers do not really get the same experience of the airport they might get earlier. Is there a possibility for that to be looked at?

There is always a possibility. At the moment we are focused on ensuring the basics are available, such as food, coffee, water or whatever it may be. On the additional offerings, we have extended hours in a lot of our facilities, perhaps not as late because the economics of how late we can keep them open for a small number of-----

The DAA should consider it. Similarly, one of my brothers was away and his flight was slightly delayed. It came in at 12.25 a.m. He had to check in bags. The flight was 20 minutes late and the Aircoaches were gone. We are trying to get people to use buses. I am not saying they need to run 24 hours but could there be a facility that if the planes are delayed on particular nights, an extra one is there, especially if the passengers have booked. They have paid for the service but do not get it and are stuck with a €50 taxi because, at that hour of the night, not much is available. I think it is great. I never drive to the airport. I just do not do it anymore at all. I always get the Aircoach, which involves a bit of complication. I have to get a lift from the Aircoach stop at the other end or maybe get dropped down to it, depending on the time of day, but we should be encouraging people to use buses and the buses should be in line with the passenger schedules and make allowances for delays. I accept Aircoach is a profit route and not a PSO route, but it is important, particularly when people have booked. Is there a way to speak to Aircoach?

Yes. We are seeing a lot more routes and options through the night. Depending on specifics, not all economic viables run as frequently or 24 hours per day. We encourage it. We provide information on the flights in advance, and when things change, we let the providers know. Depending on the specifics of the route, there may be a gap at the quietest time and that is-----

Again, when people have paid for their service, they should at least be able to avail it. When flights are delayed, they should be able to provide an extra route, time slot or whatever.

The Cork Airport survey came out very well. Does DAA do the same survey for Dublin Airport? It is 94% or 95% in Cork. What is the figure for Dublin?

We do the same. We have a number of independent surveys from a point of view of our regulator, the IAA. We have service quality measures that are independently measured but we do our own as well. We will have a consequence if we do not hit a certain level on those service qualities and, thankfully, they are going really well this year so far. Our own surveys are saying that back. I think Mr. Jacobs referenced about 85% positivity. It is a mark out of ten that people will give us across a broad range of questions, from-----

Dublin Airport is on about 85% and Cork Airport is on about 94%, so there is a little bit of catching up to do, but no pressure between the two.

Regarding the 100 ml limit, when we get C3 scanners everywhere, will that limit go or not?

Good. I wish to touch briefly on the flight path. The witnesses said they devolve the responsibility for the flight paths to AirNav and the IAA. Is it the responsibility of DAA or of AirNav? The plane takes off the runway. The runway is the DAA’s. The plane takes off and the aircraft is now in the air. Is it still the DAA’s aircraft? Is it AirNav’s aircraft? Does AirNav tell it to turn left or right? Does the DAA tell AirNav they can turn left or right?

That is air traffic control, but flight paths are the responsibility of the airport operator, which is us. We are saying to AirNav, “Help us run the flight paths.” Flight path design and promulgation is our responsibility and we involve AirNav in that. We are responsible for the design of the flight paths, but the implementation of the flight paths on a daily basis is air traffic control. We see it as our responsibility. Finding an improvement is our responsibility, which we will do in consultation with AirNav, IAA and, as Mr. McLean said, other groups if we think there is a better flight path out there.

As Mr. Jacobs referenced, much consultation was done. I think it was in 2016 when it was first identified that there would need to be a divergence between the two runways. At that time, indicative scenarios and modelling was done. What is happening today is more or less aligned to what those models showed. I do not think there is a whole new area. When we opened first, the Leas-Chathaoirleach will remember we found they did fly over areas that were perhaps not in that modelling, and we quickly worked with our partners to rectify that. We put our hands up and have rectified it since. What one will find now is that they are flying more or less as per what was consulted and what was included in the relevant action.

I think piles of emails and what is actually happening can sometimes be different things. We have the monitoring. Are there people looking up and seeing flights saying, “I did not think that was going to happen”? Yes, there are. However, we think it is in line and is compliant with what was consulted on in 2016. Looking up and seeing planes is one thing. Noise is the more real thing, and that is where it can be at decibel levels where it can be difficult to be in a kitchen or garden, for example. For us, that is the most important issue and that is where the buy-out, insulation and everything else comes into play, guided by ANCA in terms of where the noise is to manage it - it is 63 dB to insulate and 69 dB to buy out.

Finally, the witnesses may have heard that Michael O’Leary was kind of saying last week that they can open carparks or fields, they can put down a bit of gravel and they can do anything they like because those are temporary. Regarding car parking, can the witnesses give us an idea of how bad or tight it may be? Clearly, it is not as expensive as people may think - or people are willing to pay the price.

It takes managing and we are good at managing it, but I do not think it is that big of a drama because people have heeded the advice and are booking early. Most important, people are doing what the Leas-Chathaoirleach described. Some 34% of people are saying they do not want to take the car to the airport and will take the Aircoach or another bus. Some 34% of all passengers coming by bus is absolutely music to our ears.

Two years ago it was been less than 30%. Going back to 2005 and 2006, when the cap was put in place, it was been less than 5%. It is great that people are choosing to take the bus. It is taking some pressure off the carparks. We manage carparks well. We have over twice the number of carpark spaces per passenger than Heathrow does, for example. It is great that people have heeded the advice. It will not be carnage. If a person wants to get a short-term carpark space this weekend, we are sold out. However, if people are going away on that classic one- or two-week holiday and want to get a long-term carpark space, they can go on the website and they will be able to find one and book. It is not that big an issue. We will continue to do a good job. We would like more carpark spaces but, most of all, we would like more people to take the bus to the airport.

I thank the witnesses for their presentation. Some of the issues have been dealt with. Returning to the car parking spaces, what is the prospect of getting a lease agreement on the deal the DAA did that did not work out? Is there any progress in respect of that which would relieve the immediate situation?

The CCPC determined that we were not able to buy the QuickPark site. To remind everybody, the QuickPark site would have given us an additional 6,000 spaces. They are also the best 6,000 spaces that exist. It was a great shame that we had issues with car parking last summer - people were anxious more than we had issues – and we were not able to operate those spaces. Since the CCPC decision, we have engaged with the owner of the QuickPark site. I have met with the owner to ask whether we could do a deal to operate for two months. We were close to getting a deal done but QuickPark has withdrawn from that process. I cannot say more than that. The Deputy could ask it why that was. We wanted to be able to operate the carpark. Our understanding was that legally we could do so on a short-term basis – just for July and August – and then we would be gone in September. This was not to make money but to tell passengers that they could worry less because we got 6,000 additional spaces. I do not think that process will go forward now. I understand the vendor withdrew because it may not be able to let us do it.

My understanding is it is with anybody, not just us. If we were doing it, obviously we would follow the law. The law, as determined by the CCPC, is we cannot own it. We are saying that we do not want to own it anymore. We think that was the wrong decision. We just wanted to operate it for two months to provide passengers with more choice and take away that anxiety about car parking. However, ultimately, it is now up to the vendor to see what it does next. I know it is still actively looking to sell it. I hope it does so, because there is nothing worse than hearing about people being anxious about car parking and then seeing a tumbleweed going across 6,000 spaces in the best carpark in the whole campus. We just wanted to operate for the summer but we will now move on and just run the 20,000 spaces we have.

It is regrettable, to say the least. Mr. Jacobs mentioned that 35% or more of people are using the bus for the airport. That works for some people but, for an awful lot of people, the option is not there. It is the only international airport on the island with no rail. The bus is fine but it does not suit an awful lot of people. We need to see the metro happen but it will take time. What is the timescale in that regard? What engagement has there been and where are we going on all of that? It is one of the major issues that people have.

The sooner, the better, and the more variety of transportation options to and from the airport, the better. I think we have all flown to international airports around the world where one would say, “Wow, I wish we had that.” We are ready for the metro coming to Dublin Airport. We have the station ready. We have designs for what will be the metro station at Dublin Airport, right beside the church, ready to go. I saw recently there were plans for the DART to go from Clongriffin to the airport. That could be done sooner. We welcome that. I think both should be done. I would not pause the metro to think about the DART; I would do both. More things can happen. I was in LaGuardia Airport recently, looking at the amount of ridesharing that is happening with Uber out of LaGuardia. It has come up with a unique solution that is very interesting.

Ultimately, a single person travelling in their own car or in a taxi is absolutely a wasted opportunity. We need to get more people using public transportation. We need to get more bums on taxi seats and look at things like ridesharing. We welcome the metro. We are ready for it.

We welcome the DART coming to the airport. That will be very good, as will all those options that will give people more choice and ultimately get more people on public transport rather than taking their car to the airport.

On the issue of choice as it relates to Cork and other more regional airports, what more can be done? I understand there is one major airport in the country. It is the one that has the most flights and gets the most traffic. It is obviously where the carriers want to move from and to, but we have the resources of the other airports. We have capacity at Cork Airport, which is represented today, and at Shannon and Knock airports. We do not need to build any more and we do not need huge investment to increase the volume of passengers who can use those airports. What is the obstacle, block or difficulty in overcoming that?

There is no obstacle or block. We cannot dictate to an airline where to go. We cannot dictate. We can incentivise. From a Cork perspective, we have great relationships with the airlines that fly there, including Ryanair, Aer Lingus and all the others. We meet them frequently. We will offer enhanced incentives for the next two and a half years to move air traffic that is taken specifically out of Dublin to Cork Airport. We will incentivise that financially, but we must take that air traffic out of Dublin to move it to Cork. We have to make money. We are self-financing and get nothing from the Government. However, we will offer incentives for specially targeting the moving of air traffic. That will go to our board this Friday for approval. We cannot dictate, however. Even Michael O'Leary will say that airlines make the decision where to put aircraft.

The other point is airlines are now nervous that if they start moving aircraft around, it will prove that the cap was right in the first instance. They are more inclined to move aircraft abroad to prove that there should be a free market. We have created a scarcity thing, whereby airlines want to stay in Dublin because they are fearful that if they move from there, they will never get it back. Sometimes, when a policy goes in a certain direction, the opposite to what was intended happens. We will financially incentivise routes to move from Dublin to Cork to see whether those incentives will work.

I will add to that. We are taking a total Ireland view. We run two airports. I used to fly from Shannon a lot. It is a very good campus. I see things such as maintenance, repair and overhaul, MRO, and chartered flights there. When Mr. McLean had the challenge of the Europa League final, and there were lots of late charter flights with Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen fans who wanted to come in, we said they should go to Cork and Shannon, or look at those other airports, if they could not get into Dublin. For Shannon charters, I would talk to transatlantic carriers that are looking to start operating into Ireland and say they might get slots this winter or summer at Dublin but not keep them, and they should definitely talk to Shannon. It has pre-clearance, which is a great advantage for any airport. Airports such as Manchester look at that and say, "Wow." Dublin and Shannon Airports both have pre-clearance. That is a very good differentiator.

We will take a total Ireland view. We will definitely incentivise airlines to go to Cork. As Mr. MacCarthy said, Cork Airport is big and busy in the summer but we want to make it busier in the winter and have European connectivity that is good all year round. Shannon has some unique opportunities as well. Ultimately, this is about all airports moving forward, which we support.

Are there any issues at the other airports with regard to noise? There is clearly a problem in Dublin. I respect that it was said the noise level is more or less where it used to be, or where it was planned to be or set out in the planning, but an awful lot of the public living in that area feel that it is a lot "more" than it is "less". That is a problem. If we were to see expansion in other parts of the country, will we run into similar positions?

I do not believe so. I also worked in Shannon Airport, although I will not speak for it. The flightpaths there largely come in over the Atlantic. Flights, therefore, are coming in over fallow land. We have a very good relationship with our neighbours in Cork. We are in a rural part but are not too far from the city. Flights come over the city and circle over the sea at Kinsale. We can count on two hands the number of noise complaints we get in a single year. We have no issue with noise. We have a very good relationship with our local community. As a matter of fact, we worked with AirNav Ireland, Ryanair and Aer Lingus on alternative flight paths, which are called continuous descent operations, that reduce the amount of circling over areas. That was completed this year. It has proven to be a success in reducing noise and fuel burn.

Ireland is further ahead than most EU countries when it comes to noise in aviation. We think it is a very serious issue. Thankfully, the trajectory of travel is that newer aircraft are producing far less noise, including the MAX and A320neo aeroplanes, which is good. It is very good that we have a regulator. We take the issue very seriously but Dublin is unique in its location.

On the two runways, some people are looking up, seeing aircraft and saying they did not see them before, but when we had the south and crosswind runways at Dublin Airport, on busy, windy days, aircraft were taking off and flying over Santry, Whitehall and Beaumount. If we compare the situation now to then, ultimately approximately half the number of households are impacted now than were impacted on those busy, windy days. Some households are saying that when they looked up previously they never saw aircraft but they see them now, although these are generally at a height. However, half the number of households are really impacted by the noise from low-flying aircraft taking off since we got two runways, which is a good thing. We will continue to focus on noise and do everything we can. When I go around Europe, Ireland is in a very good place because we take the issue very seriously and are doing things to incentivise airlines, such as Aer Lingus and Ryanair, to have new A320neo and MAX aircraft, which produce 40% to 50% less noise.

I welcome Mr. Jacobs and his team. They are before the committee again. It is good to have them.

I have a couple of questions. On the second runway, will the representatives give us some idea of the positive impact that has had in getting aeroplanes away in the early morning and at peak times? I still hear from people who use Dublin Airport that there is still some congestion, especially in the early mornings. How might Dublin Airport get better efficiencies? Is it planned to get better efficiencies there? I assume some of it is connected with flight paths, which were talked about for other reasons. Maybe they will expand on that shortly.

The next issue I will talk a little about is the whole Shannon-Cork issue. I am on record with most of the witnesses over time as saying that I disagreed with independence for Shannon, which was presented as a major positive for the region. In truth, it has not been, notwithstanding the team there. Mary Considine and the board have done an amazing job against a very difficult backdrop of coming through Covid. They have worked very hard and had some major successes, but we are now seeing the culmination of what I predicted a number of years ago. We have seen that Dublin Airport has effectively sucked in a lot of the growth in traffic, as a result of growth in much of the tourist market, over the past number of years. It is now reaching a point where the DAA is starting to incentivise people to move back to other airports. The starting point is to incentivise Cork Airport, as Mr. MacCarthy rightly identified. Why would it not be incentivised - it is part of the DAA group. That is why Shannon is now, sadly, suffering. It is on the periphery of the group.

I still think there is an opportunity. I very much welcome that Mary Considine has remained in close contact with Dublin Airport, notwithstanding the separation, to try to ensure that the airports are not competitors. Truthfully, Shannon will never compete with Dublin because of the size and scale it has. What more can be done to assist the growth of Shannon and to assist Dublin Airport in being able to maintain that cap without breaching it while, at the same time, all of us with the green jersey on try to ensure that Ireland gets the next few aircraft that Mr. O'Leary decides to present, rather than Portugal, Britain, Scotland or wherever? I will let the witnesses answer those two bits. I will then come back to them.

As the Deputy knows, when our runway opened in August 2022, we intentionally had a phased ramping up of the operations. That was because it was in effect a whole redesign not just of the airspace but how we operate our airport. We had a whole recertification of that. As I said, safety was the number one priority in all that. In the early days, we ramped up our hours. On a gradual basis, we looked at concepts of operations that drove a new operation but with safety as the main priority. As we all, including all our users, became more familiar with that we started to introduce improvements, in particular, improving departure intervals and reducing them between flights.

One of the current challenges is that the switchover on the north runway becomes available at 7 a.m., as the Deputy is probably aware, which is right in the middle of our first wave. The last aircraft before 7 a.m. departs from the southern runway and the next one after 7 a.m. departs from the northern runway, as per the current planning conditions. A lot of work was done to ensure that transition happened smoothly, and that we managed it, in conjunction with AirNav and our other stakeholders.

As we have progressed, we have seen improvements in the airfield's overall efficiency. In the year to date, our on-time performance is significantly improved on that of previous years. We have a working group that meets weekly or more regularly as required and looks purely at the busy first wave operation. That group comprises us, AirNav as our key partner in managing air traffic as well as aircraft off the runway, and other stakeholders. Everyone is focused on how well the airport operates. Work has also been done with EUROCONTROL as regards aircraft that might get slots. We now have a desk at EUROCONTROL that we can ring when there is congestion at the airport so that we can try to improve the slots that aircraft can have. It is not always possible, but we engage on that.

Through our teams and APOC, our operational centre, and in conjunction with our stakeholders, we examine what is coming at us and how we can improve the situation. As the Senator can imagine, we are getting more efficiency off the north runway with departure after departure and arrivals coming in on a separate runway than we would with a mixed mode of arrivals and departures, with greater segregation between them. There have been many improvements.

There is no better person to contribute next than Mr. MacCarthy, as he has been involved in Cork and Shannon Airports, but speaking as someone who has worked in an airline, Ms Mary Considine and her team have done a good job. The Senator is right, in that Shannon is not necessarily competing with Dublin. Dublin is a national hub airport. Shannon’s competition is actually Cork, so the Senator should be careful about what Mr. MacCarthy says. He might not give his best secrets away when suggesting how Shannon might grow.

There are things that can happen. Pre-clearance is fantastic. Management at other airports come to Ireland and say it is fantastic. They really want to get it. The Americans are not going to be giving out that much of it anymore, so it is a unique advantage for Shannon. I was in the US recently telling airlines that pre-clearance worked well for Delta Airlines and American Airlines. The DAA actively has conversations with the American carriers telling them that the pre-clearance system in Shannon is great, it is a good airport and they should be thinking about Shannon.

Getting an engineering hub at an airport, which Shannon has – it also has a great deal of space on the campus, with many sheds available – is a good way to get the airlines there, as they could then base their engineering there. Lufthansa is doing that. Airlines would also add aircraft to Shannon as a result.

Shannon is seeing more chartered operations in the summer months for people from the south of the country to the classic holiday destinations in Turkey and Greece.

There needs to be an incentive scheme for the key airlines – Ryanair and Aer Lingus – to base more aircraft at Shannon. That is where the competition will come in with Cork.

I am tight on time, but before Mr. MacCarthy contributes, I wish to raise a matter that relates to the cap on parking at Dublin. Has anyone examined the idea of the airport having a park-and-ride facility in Naas or somewhere similar on the western road? My mother trained as a nurse in the UK. In her early days of travelling to the UK, people would check in somewhere on O’Connell Street and be taken by bus to the airport. If the DAA wants to solve the problem, it has to be a little more imaginative than just looking at car park capacity on the airfield or in close proximity to it. The DAA could consider having facilities further out along any of the motorways, including the M50. Perhaps it could do it more cheaply, but it would at least reduce traffic and put people onto buses.

That is a great idea. We are actively looking at how we can have more park-and-ride facilities and making people aware of them as options. I love the idea of checking in for a flight on O’Connell Street. We operate Red Sea International Airport. When people depart from it, they check in for their flights at the hotels from which they are leaving. Now, it is a resort with an airport-----

I like that idea. It will become part of aviation in the future. The model of walking up to a check-in desk and putting in the big bags is not the only way of operating, what with modern technology. A few airports in Germany are doing downtown check-in as a business product. The Senator’s suggestion is an interesting one that we will-----

As Senator Dooley knows, there are two seasons in aviation: summer, which is April to October, and winter, which is October to April. This summer is cooked. It is on sale, so the schedules are done and there is nothing we can do. This winter is largely on sale as well, so the winter is set. What is up for grabs is summer 2025, the marketing season for which will start shortly. Dublin will not cross-subsidise us, nor should it, by offering incentives to airlines to move. We have our own P and L accounts. Dublin has regulated P and L accounts and cannot cross-subsidise us. For us and Shannon to get ready with decent incentives, they would need to start now and run to October for next summer, so the game is on.

How the regulator would reduce slots is to be determined. He will probably say “No new routes” rather than “Stop assigning routes” and then tell all airlines to lose 4%. It will not be defined routes that are up for grabs, but capacity in its various forms.

Shannon has published a healthy P and L account. The airport needs to be sharpening its incentives and getting ready for next summer.

I thank the witnesses for appearing before us. I have flown out of Cork a few times. It is a lovely little airport. I could not believe how quickly I got through it in both directions the couple of times I visited. I compliment Mr. MacCarthy.

Not to be critical of Dublin, but Dublin has vastly improved on what it was a number of decades ago. My first flight out of Dublin on my own was in 1993. It is a different planet now compared with then.

I will start with a couple of quick queries about statements Mr. Jacobs made. Why did the DAA insulate dozens of homes due west of the north runway?

When we were reviewing what was happening from August 2022 on, many people asked why the DAA had insulated all of those homes if the predominant flight path was not going to be over them. We are 22 months on and, by Mr. Jacobs’s own reckoning, 660 homes have not been insulated but are likely to require insulation, that is, they are on the flight path and near the airfield. Why are we still waiting for 660 homes to be insulated? What is stopping the DAA from insulating those homes?

Nothing. We want to insulate more homes even outside of the relevant action. Six hundred and sixty homes are in the relevant action and we want to insulate them. Whether they want insulation is the householders’ choice, but I hope that the vast majority will say “Yes”.

We would need to know to which homes exactly the Deputy is referring to know why they were insulated. Ultimately, insulation is part of the overall noise programme, which is regulated by ANCA.

I thank Mr. Jacobs. If there is a second round of questions, we might explore that matter a little more.

When Deputy Crowe asked whether the DAA was in breach of any other planning conditions, Mr. Jacobs said, “No”. Would he like to revisit that answer?

Mr. Jacobs will understand that we are not standing on the head of a pin; the pin is over there. The DAA has been found by a planning authority to have breached a planning condition associated with its operations. It is a question in law and the DAA is entitled to challenge it and it may be vindicated. However, in the interim, the DAA is in breach of one of its planning conditions, according to the law of the land, full stop.

Mr. Jacobs's opinion is important, but in the context of the planning authority making a decision, that is a fact. The DAA does not get to play with the facts. It can challenge it and if it gets Mr. Justice Humphreys to make a decision to vindicate its position then Mr. Jacobs can answer that question with absolute confidence.

Again, I state it is not a matter of Mr. Jacobs's opinion. It is a fact that the planning authority, Fingal County Council, has found the DAA to be in breach. It is not a question of whether the DAA is or is not, the Judiciary can make its decision later, but today, the DAA is in breach of a planning condition.

I want to address very briefly the fact that on a number of occasions, before the committee and on television and radio, Mr. Jacobs said that the homes are overflown "unexpectedly". We know the DAA has employed a contractor, as it is perfectly entitled to do, to design a flight path. The chosen contractor was AirNav Ireland. Could any other organisation with the relevant expertise have been employed to do the assessment Mr. Jacobs is talking about, to determine whether flight paths could be changed? This would be to improve the DAA's capacity to get planes in and out of the airport, while impacting the smallest number of people possible. I accept entirely the point made by Mr. McLean that moving a flight path might not benefit everybody.

I am happy to hear that.

My question relates to timing. The new runway has been in operation for 22 months. It is a little bit of an issue if the DAA is saying that it will take another six months, or thereabouts, to get to a point where another potential flight path is identified - or not - that reduces the number of people being overflown. If a third-party contractor is being used, and I mention the busyness of the airport, which I entirely accept, and the fact the DAA will not be planning it anyway - is there any way we can speed up this process?

We will push them so that they come to us as quickly as possible. Our team will then analyse the proposal to see how practical it is. I give a strong undertaking that we will push them as fast as possible to see what is realistic and what can be implemented. We are not trying to go slow on this. If there is a better flight path that can reduce noise, we want to find it and implement it as quickly as possible, within the constraints of it being a complicated airspace, above and below, with a complicated airfield. There are many different things at play. Safety comes first and then what is practically implementable from an air traffic control point of view. The design of a flight path is one thing. We then give it to AirNav and the airlines as being what we want to operate. Many airlines have different points of view and AirNav has a particular point of view, but safety is what comes first.

I thank Mr. Jacobs. I will rattle off three quick questions. The DAA's projection is already 6% above the profile from 2023. I find it very hard to understand how the DAA will be able to credibly manage the 32 million passengers. I respect the fact that is trying, but it is already 6% over-profile. Will the IAA ruling regarding the winter schedule mitigate that, notwithstanding anything that might occur with Aer Lingus? My understanding that the DAA's complaint management system has been up and down a little bit of late. Please comment on this and any improvements to be made to it. It has been reported to me in my constituency and in Meath, that it has been up and down. The charge made by Ryanair, which has not really been addressed here, is that certain infrastructural changes, subject to permission through Fingal County Council, are purely there to increase the DAA's charges. I ask Mr. Jacobs to respond to that because I do not think he has.

Will the IAA decision help this winter? Yes, it will. Will it help more in 2025 because we will have a full 12 months? Yes, it will help even more. I think we are slightly less than 6%, in that we are tracking ahead, but we are worried. We are not banking on the Aer Lingus strike happening, taking a long time and taking a chunk of passengers out of the equation. We are worried that we may be forced into a breach. I think everybody has now responded. The IAA has issued its decision. That is a good thing. I will have to take a look at the issue of the complaint management system but I have not heard that it is an issue.

On the Ryanair charges last week, I think the Deputy means the underpass that was referred to in terms of the-----

Yes, Ryanair does not like the underpass. We like the underpass. I cannot see Dublin Airport operating above a capacity of 40 million passengers without the underpass. I think that at some point in time Ryanair will become a fan of the underpass. Ryanair did not like T2. It does not like a lot of the aspects of infrastructure. I love Ryanair. It is great at buying airlines but it does not run airports. That is what we do. It must be remembered that we have 43 airline customers and we have to design for all of them. Ryanair is the simplest and most efficient. We also have airlines that want a five-star service because they are charging people first-class and business-class tickets to go to the Middle East and the United States. We have to build an airport for all. We need the underpass to move vehicles safely from the east side to the west side and back in the airfield. That includes fuel trucks, goods, cargo and at some point in time, it will also include passengers. Aer Lingus and Ryanair will welcome it because they see it getting other operations out of their way over at the west side of the airfield.

The DAA is already in breach of the passenger cap. According to the Department of Transport, the figure is 33.5 million people. At our last meeting, Mr. Jacobs said that includes transit passengers and the DAA does not include that in its calculations, even though An Bord Pleanála and other airports do. Today, Mr. Jacobs said that the DAA would be forced into breaching the cap. If, according to Mr. Jacobs, being 1.5 million people over the cap now is not in breach of the cap, what figure, according to him, is a breach of the 32 million cap.

Last year the figure was 31.9 million people, net of transits and only single-counting transfers. Everybody needs to remember that the cap is about road congestion, cars coming to and from the airport. In theory, if every single passenger came on a bus, no cars came to Dublin Airport and the car parks were all empty, the cap would still exist. For me, the cap is a blunt and now out-of-date instrument, because 34% of passengers are coming on the bus and the cap is based on cars coming to and from the airport. That is why we think it is right and sensible to exclude transit passengers, that is, a plane landing, nobody getting off the plane and nobody getting into a car. We are single-counting every single transfer. If someone flies from Donegal to Dublin and on to JFK, we are saying that is one passenger.

Those passengers do not come to Dublin Airport by car, so we think it is a sensible calculation. Many of the airlines argue that all transfer passengers should be excluded. Most importantly, we do not control passenger numbers. If I told airlines not to apply for slots, I would be breaking the law. Airlines apply for slots and that is what drives passenger numbers.

The figure is still more than 33 million according to the Department of Transport. The cap is being breached. That is the reality. On the planning application to increase the cap to 40 million that went in before Christmas, Mr. Jacobs mentioned the tunnel being needed for the airport to be at 45 million passenger capacity. The figure of 50 million passengers has already been mentioned today. An application has been made to increase the cap to 40 million passengers by 2030, but this is included as part of a massive application relating to infrastructure. It is the biggest application Fingal County Council has ever received. Mr. Jacobs has said today the DAA could put in an operational planning application to raise the passenger cap only and it is looking at this. The DAA is all over the shop with its planning applications. Why did it not just make a planning application to raise the passenger cap with no infrastructure attached to it? Why did it not just make an operational application?

We made the infrastructure application last December. I wish we had made it sooner. That is us building capacity and lifting the passenger cap. If the application is granted, the passenger cap will be removed and we can operate to a higher number. We also want to build things to reduce emissions and to be able to operate to a higher number. What we have learned since then is that there is great demand from the airlines. We may make this operational application because it is the right thing to do. Why is it the right thing to do? If we do not do it there will be a loss of connectivity for Ireland and jobs will go. This is what we want to protect. We do not want other airports to take our passengers or airlines from us. We want to be able to grow and this is the most important thing. We are not all over the shop. We are being very pragmatic. We wish planning in Ireland would go faster. We wish we had made an infrastructure application sooner. We will not be caught out again. We want to get all our planning in order so we can grow Dublin Airport and Cork Airport to meet the transport demands of the population.

The DAA is probably the most experienced organisation in Fingal with regard to making planning applications. It beggars belief it would have made that planning application and is now considering an operational one. In the context of the planning application that was submitted, in response to a parliamentary question and direct contact from me, I know the DAA is exploring placing an earth berm at the northern boundary of the north runway. The berm would be an on-the-ground noise mitigation measure. What is the current status of that? Why are we so far behind on it? Why was it not included in the planning application, particularly in light of the calls for it in areas of south Swords, such as Boroimhe, Ridgewood and River Valley? Will Mr. Jacobs comment on that matter?

I do not think earth berms require planning permission, which is why it was not in the application. They are something that can mitigate noise. It depends, as there are many factors to it, and it is not as simple as building a mound and the noise will go away. We are actively looking at earth berms as part of the overall noise programme we will have. They would work in certain places. We have earth berms in place. We will look at having more to see how it is evolving whereby we can implement them if we think they will take away noise.

We absolutely can. Fingal County Council asked whether we could put one in a specific part of Boroimhe, which we did. We have 20 permanent and temporary monitors. We will take the view of Fingal County Council and the aircraft noise competent authority in terms of the best places to put them. The temporary ones are good because they can be moved around to provide data and we can then tell the committee where there was noise. We want to have more of these and possibly move them around so people get the reassurance and we get all of the data in terms of where the noise levels are at. If we go from having 20 to 30 of them, we are fine with that.

Last week, Michael O'Leary came before the committee. Perhaps it was entertaining for some people watching in but I found it quite unproductive in terms of getting any real detail. He was excoriating in his criticism of the management of the DAA over many years. This is not a surprise. Mr. Jacobs has a history in terms of Ryanair. I must ask a question in the public interest. According to the annual report, a great deal of executive compensation was in the form of Ryanair stock.

That is a great question. Ultimately, we want to move away from passenger caps. We want to provide the connectivity that Ireland needs. Noise quotas and movement caps are better ways to operate. Passenger caps are an archaic way. I hope the 40 million passenger infrastructure application we have applied for is the last one with a specific passenger number attached to it.

This is my point. If there were no passenger cap the DAA could probably operate the current building and current terminals, perhaps extending the hours a little closer to midnight and moving some of what is at the peak. There are downtimes in the afternoons. The airport could probably operate to 37 million or 38 million passengers today.

We have been doing it for a number of years. We have been speaking about getting to a number such as 40 million. Ultimately, the infrastructure application is to lift the cap of 32 million passengers and allow us to build infrastructure that allows us to grow. We want to move off the 40 million passenger number and speaking about a passenger count. We want to talk about aircraft movements and a noise quota to help manage noise. The passenger number is not the most typical way to look at the size of an airport.

I want Shannon Airport and Cork Airport to grow. I do not particularly want every person in Ireland flying through Dublin Airport. If half of them were not there it would make my experience a more pleasant one when I am going through Dublin Airport. I am concerned about the DAA seeking a 40 million passenger cap because, by the time it gets it and plans and builds the infrastructure, the number will be at 40 million. It will then have to go back and ask for a cap of 60 million passengers and will be left wondering why it did not ask for that in the first place. Why ask for a cap of 60 million passengers? Why not just not have a cap?

Ultimately, this is what we want. We want to have the flexibility to meet the needs of the country. This means moving off a specific passenger number. Airlines and airports all speak about passenger numbers because it is the competitive league table for where they sit in terms of size. It would be better to move off it as a way of judging and measuring the size of an airport. It is not how we want to have it. We want to be able to operate to the number that matches supply and demand. This would be great for jobs and the economy.

Planning is a long piece of string. When does the DAA expect Fingal County Council to say "Yea" or "Nay" so it can start to put measures in place? Fingal County Council granting the planning application does not mean Dublin Airport can operate to 37 million or 38 million passengers and the cap is gone. It will only be when the DAA builds all of this infrastructure in theory.

I hope we will get planning permission from Fingal County Council within months. Obviously, it will be appealed and the matter will go to An Bord Pleanála.

There will then will be a process. Hopefully, it will take two years from us submitting our case to An Bord Pleanála making a determination. Once the cap is lifted, which will ultimately be a decision for An Bord Pleanála, we will then be able to operate to a bigger number while building things for a more sustainable airport. As already stated, there were 120,000 passengers last Sunday. We already operate, and I am sure we can operate safely and efficiently, to about 40 million a year. There were 120,000 passengers last Sunday and they all got through security in the right amount of time. Standards are really good. We are already able to do that. The demand is already there.

I wish to discuss the complaint system and PFAS. Does the DAA know how often the WebTrak noise complaint system is down or inaccessible? It is reported to us that it is down a lot and it prevents residents from reporting. It has also been identified that emails are not accepted. A person can only log one complaint at a time. There is an hour delay on WebTrak. There is also the principle of the DAA investigating its own complaints. Did the DAA design that system or did the regulator? Is it common within the industry? It is obvious that it is not ideal.

We want it up and running the whole time. I am not aware but I will ask the team what the average downtime is and come back to the committee. I get a fortnightly update on the number of complaints. We implemented something to stop bot complaints. That is not a person tapping away, putting in a complaint but an automated piece of software generating 1,000 complaints or just replicating 1,000 complaints. We want to stop that because it just clogs up the system. I will check what the downtime is. Our commitment is that we want to look at it. I will get a report on it. We want it to be the source that people trust that we use.

I wish to discuss PFAS. I am my party's environmental spokesperson. Mr. Jacobs referenced the DAA's environmental plans. It was reported that there were PFAS on site in 2016 and were buried on site. Dublin Airport sits within a wider environment in Dublin, and there are SPAs, SCAs and the impact on water bodies. How are PFAS managed on site? What is the responsible authority? Is it the DAA or the EPA? How is that overseen? It does not help that people read in German publications that PFAS are being managed in the environs of Dublin Airport and not within statutory authorities.

The EPA is the responsible authority for PFAS and all chemicals like that. There are 97 PFAS sites in Ireland. It is important that everybody remembers that. We have worked closely with the EPA since we found trace elements of PFAS. We removed them from Dublin. We got ahead of this and worked in close conjunction with the EPA, Fingal County Council and everybody else to remove the PFAS. There are trace levels of PFAS in the drinking water but that is because it is provided by Uisce Éireann. That is the same for anyone living in Dublin 4, Dublin 18 or any other part of Dublin. We have a really good plan on identifying and removing PFAS levels in close conjunction with the EPA, which is the competent authority.

I wish to ask Mr. McLean about the noise mitigation berm. I wrote probably 18 months ago. I think there is one in the Netherlands that is made up of a series of undulating berms. They are really precise and mathematically worked out. As a result, they break up sound waves. They have proven to be extremely successful compared with one large berm or something like that, which blocks the view and also blocks sound waves but not as well as undulating berms do. Will Mr. McLean give his view on that and whether the berm he mentioned earlier is being looked at from that perspective? Was afforestation considered closer to the particular location in south Swords to the north of the field? Will land acquisition be required for that or does the DAA already own the land?

We have done a great deal of work and compiled studies on that. Studies have also been done elsewhere. It is debatable as to the benefits or how exact those benefits are. We are progressing the berm to which Mr. Kenny referred. It is within our boundary. That is the only area we are looking at. That does not mean we will not look further in the future.

Will Mr. McLean consider coming back to the committee with that information? It would be very helpful. Will he consider coming back to the committee to identify the locations of the 606 properties identified earlier?

Regarding the maintenance schedule, the DAA does notify, by and large. It sends emails and puts information up on the website. I thank the witnesses for that. I have asked questions of various authorities and everybody said the same thing.

There is no statutory arrangement, which I find odd. However, that is not Mr. McLean’s issue. My issue relates to whether there is a minimum notice period that the DAA would be prepared to stick to for maintenance. I am aware that inclement weather has had a bearing on the airport’s capacity to take the rubber off the runway, among other things. I completely understand and respect the position on that; ultimately, however, having regard to the notification of people east of the north runway, namely the people of Portmarnock who have never had a plane in the sky over their houses before, it is not exactly nice to have planes overhead all of a sudden at 4 a.m. I am wondering whether the DAA would volunteer to have a minimum notice period.

In an ideal world, we would give the most notice possible. What we are trying to work towards, as the Deputy is aware, is achieving what we want to do in six blocks over the year, roughly every eight weeks. As the Deputy alluded to, we are trying to be cognisant of weather conditions and other things, such as examination times. Being mindful of these, there might not be exactly eight weeks between each cycle. Once we lock in a date, we try to communicate it as early as possible, subject to the usual caveats. There has been a little flux in the weather as of late, as the Deputy stated, and I hope it will settle more as we move forward.

My next point is on cleanliness at the airport. It has been fined for the condition of toilets and other facilities. How has it gone about rectifying this or making sure it does not happen again? Although I admit it has been a while since I was in terminal 1, I believe there are a couple of loos there that I would walk to terminal 2 to avoid. Does the DAA have plans to upgrade certain areas?

On the service quality measure the Deputy referred to, passengers are interviewed about the standards. It is not purely a matter of cleanliness as it is also about the whole offering. As part of our planning for the summer, there have been many replacements and repairs within the bathrooms. We have examined the cleaning schedules and increased the frequency of cleaning. We are in the process of making a block of toilets in the land-side area available to passengers on the air side, or in the terminal 1 extension area upstairs. It is a matter of considering certain capacity constraints and determining how to deal with them. We have longer-term plans for the refurbishment of some of the toilets. The challenge is closing them down in a busy airport in order to refurbish them and determining how to do that. We are working through that. We are already seeing better scores this year and improvements. It remains to be seen whether we will pass every quarter, because of the business as opposed to the cleanliness standards that exist. Congestion is an issue in that if you queue to get into a toilet, you do not give it a good rating afterwards, even if the experience is good, I guess. We are examining capacity in light of the standard and are committed to continuous improvement as we move forward.

Absolutely. Over 300 staff have been recruited this year. There is much focus on the security experience and its impact on the rest of the operation. This is in a different place altogether. We have had much engagement across all the community. It was not just about security; it was also about challenges across all the operation, involving all the stakeholders, baggage and everything else. We are not seeing these now. All the partners across the airport, not just us, have made great plans and preparations for the summer ahead, and I hope the results will be seen in the next few months.

We are all over it; it is in the corporate memory regarding what we needed to get right. I worked in security last Sunday morning. There were 120,000 passengers and they all got through very well. You can never be complacent; you have to stay on top of it. It is about recruitment, training, how you manage people on the day and how you respond. However, we are good at this and now it is up to us to continue to get people through, because it is the part of the airport experience that defines your day of travel.

I will finish up with a point on the cap. Fingal has advised in preplanning that on the infrastructure application, the cap applies to all passengers, including transit passengers, and to counting transfers twice. I do not want to speak for the entire committee but believe members, including me, are not satisfied that we have had a satisfactory explanation as to why the DAA takes an exceptional approach to the counting of passengers in respect of the cap.

It was mentioned that in 2016 the DAA was working on the flight paths and that they were in the public domain. The witnesses made it seem that flight paths from August 2022 and modifications thereafter were being publicly discussed. They were not. The east–west flight paths were the only ones that the public and we, as public representatives, ever saw until August 2022 and the first day of-----

The witnesses mentioned that they have met members of the community, including the residents’ group of St. Margaret’s and the Ward. They were not met individually but as part of the environmental group and CLG meeting. These involve big meetings, with only one question asked. It was stated at our last hearing that airport representatives would meet the residents’ group of St. Margaret’s and the Ward. We have had its representatives before the committee and I ask the DAA to meet them again. Relations with the community are at an all-time low, and we need to resolve that no matter where this goes. I asked Mr. Jacobs to meet them as soon as possible.

On noise, Thornton Hall has been earmarked as a site for international protection applicants. The noise range there is between 55 dB and 59 dB whereas the WHO recommends a safe limit of 45 dB. Therefore, I ask that the witnesses engage with the relevant Department in respect of the site in question if it is going to build there. International protection applicants deserve the same level of noise protection as anyone else living in this country.

I will finish up on the subject of noise. In the Portmarnock area – at Portmarnock DART station, for example – ANCA’s own noise-abatement policy has been breached in the past two years. At Portmarnock DART station, the noise level is 55 dB plus. Again, there is no talk of insulation for the area. We could have another two-hour meeting and more rounds on this, and there are more issues to discuss, but those are the points I would like to finish on.

I have just a couple of points. Our definition, by comparison with that of Fingal County Council, is not exceptional. The IAA, the regulator, has examined our definition related to moving to transit and the single counting of transfers. From our point of view, it is satisfied with that, so I do not believe it is exceptional.

It has made a determination on our count that the Deputy can ask it about, but from our point of view it is confirmed that our definition in respect of the single counting of transfers and moving transfers to transit is valid.

I met representatives of the St. Margaret’s group as part of a meeting with the two community groups. It was a very long and productive evening and more than 30 questions were answered. I gave a commitment to the group that I would be happy to meet it again before the end of the year, and that is still the case.

On insulation, we will be guided by Fingal County Council. If ANCA states the buildings at Thornton Hall or Portmarnock should be insulated because they come into a particular contour, we will of course insulate them because we will follow what the regulator says. A level of around 50 dB or 55 dB is below the typical level requiring insulation, but let us see what comes out in the new contours from ANCA.