Local residents raise concerns about health impacts on asylum seekers of living under a busy airport flight path in tents at Thornton Hall

Along a narrow, winding road leading to Thornton Hall in Kilsallaghan in north Dublin, there are signs criticising DAA, the company that operates Dublin Airport.

“DAA don’t care about our childrens health,” reads one.

In August 2022, the airport’s new north runway entered operation, and all of a sudden – and, residents say, quite unexpectedly – planes started flying over this area.

On Friday, aircraft roared – one after another – overhead.

Residents, worried about the disruption and potential health impacts of living under a busy flightpath, have been campaigning to have it redirected.

Now, some are raising concerns that the state – facing a crisis-level shortage of places to shelter people seeking asylum while they wait for their cases to be processed – is planning to move another 1,000 people into this noisy area.

Lands once earmarked for a “super-prison” are intended to shelter people seeking asylum, at first in tents and then later maybe in modular homes, according to an environmental impact assessment screening report.

The airplane noise starts at 7am and goes on until 11pm, says Niamh Maher, a St Margaret’s local, by phone recently.

“If it’s an issue with noise for the people who are living here, it’s definitely going to be an issue if you’re living in a tent,” she said.

At the same time, anti-asylum seeker protestors are trying to fight the opening of Thornton Hall as accommodation for asylum seekers.

Their messaging is visible further along the road leading to Thornton Hall on Friday, from groups such as St Margaret’s Says No, or Ratoath Says No.

Is this concern about airplane noise just another facet of the effort to keep asylum seekers out of Thornton Hall?

Gráinne McFadden, who lives close by, says that’s not the case. “I don’t agree with that. We are just highlighting the facts,” she said in a WhatsApp text on Tuesday.

In an interview with NewsTalk in May, she had opposed the presence of asylum seekers, mentioning safety concerns for her daughters, without bringing up the flight path.

Says McFadden: “I believe both concerns can co-exist.”

Research has time and again debunked the idea of a link between immigration and crime.

Maher says no one should be exposed to that level of noise, especially if they’re sleeping in tents. “Can’t comment on an alternate agenda,” she said.

Bulelani Mfaco of the Movement of Asylum Seekers Ireland (MASI) says it is true that asylum seekers might struggle to live so exposed to noise pollution.

“This is a matter that affects everyone living near the airport, including asylum seekers in nearby hotels,” he says.

But it’s not helpful if some would use it as a way of opposing accommodation for men seeking asylum, he said.

“We would encourage communities to protest against the abhorrent system of Direct Provision and support the integration of asylum seekers into the community,” he said.

Louder in here

Research recognises how exposure to ongoing noise pollution is a health risk, linked to hypertension or heart disease, sleep deprivation and depression.

For people who live in homes where the airplane noise is especially loud, DAA has programmes to help pay for sound insulation or even to buy them out so they can move.

So, is it a good idea to move people seeking asylum into tents in this kind of environment?

A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Equality –  which runs the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) – said it has drawn up an environmental impact assessment screening report and is adhering to all statutory requirements.

“Any potential plan for the development of more sustainable accommodation for international protection applicants will be subject to detailed site assessment to determine feasibility,” said the spokesperson.

The screening report for the Thornton Hall site says that noise levels are mostly related to frequent aircraft flyovers, and traffic.

Ambient noise on site, recorded between 10am and 12pm on 27 June 2024, ranges from 50 to 55 decibels, it says.

That is the range that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says is acceptable.

The report mainly focuses on the impacts of possible noise from construction work.

It concludes that drawing up an actual environmental impact assessment report is not necessary for the project.

The screening report says the government is planning to eventually accommodate around 1,000 people there, in “tented barracks” with “heavy-duty, waterproof canvas / pvc vinyl or similar material”.

Meanwhile, the number of planes flying over could grow, with more noise for people living under the flight path.

DAA says it might breach its cap of 32 million passengers this year. And it hopes to expand and get that passenger cap raised in future.

Mfaco of MASI says the government needs to address the issue, especially if it’s going to get louder. “To ensure that concerns about further expansion are addressed.”

Impacts

One day in September 2023, Orla Roche counted 263 planes booming over her home in Kilsallaghan from around 7:15 am to 7:45 pm,  she said, sitting at Donkey Shed café in Donaghmore in County Meath.

She pulls out sheets of paper to show the logs she’d kept for that day. Roche doesn’t count anymore these days, worried it will drive her crazy, she said.

Sometimes the planes fly so low that it is a bit unnerving and surreal to watch, she said.

“I can see Qatar written on the side of the plane,” said Roche, who works from home.

In September 2023, the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) joined residents of the St Margaret’s area in taking a case against the Department of Housing and Local Government.

The case is over noise pollution, and how DAA changed its flight paths without assessing the impact of that on communities living below – and challenging the Minister for Housing’s intervention in the dispute.

“The human impacts are profound with residents exposed to 70db, 80db or 90db of noise every few minutes all day long and excess noise at night,” says a press release on the FIE’s website.

The case, represented by FP Logue Solicitors, has been up for mention in the court a bunch but doesn’t have a ruling yet.

Call for help

In February, Fianna Fáil’s Jack Chambers TD told the Dáil that the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority (ANCA) – a body within Fingal County Council – had launched a review into the impact of noise levels on local communities.

“ANCA will determine whether the change in noise impact at the airport since the opening of the new runway is of a scale that requires new noise mitigation measures or operating restrictions,” said Chambers, who was then Minister for State at the Department of Transport.

Chambers said the review would wrap up in the following months.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Fingal County Council said that “the aircraft noise assessment (with regard to the noise impact on all communities around the airport) remains ongoing”.

This points to one possible solution to the problem of airplane noise on the whole area, including Thornton Hall: reroute the flight path.

Chambers also said the DAA had told the Department of Transport that it had added new noise monitoring terminals.

Gillian Toole, an independent councillor for Ratoath on Meath County Council, says she has little trust in DAA’s noise monitoring and reporting practices. “There should be independent noise monitoring.”

Toole says the noise levels locals are recording are between 70 and 80 decibels, which is above what the EPA says is safe.

“And that comes with exceptions too, with proper noise insulation equipment,” she said.

But when they contact the EPA, it says it can’t do much to help them, Toole said.

A recent email from the EPA to one of the locals says the EPA does have a role in upholding the environmental noise pollution laws but can’t help them in this case.

“Our understanding is that the statutory body for aircraft noise is ANCA,” it says.

Labour TD Duncan Smith has introduced a bill to take responsibility for regulating Dublin Airport’s noise away from Fingal County Council, and move it to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Both Toole and Roche say waiting for ANCA to help the community in north Dublin and south Meath has been pointless so far.

Toole, the Ratoath councillor, said those people seeking asylum who are fleeing conflict might particularly struggle to live with aircraft noise in tents. “It can be triggering for them,” she said.

On Friday morning, in Kilsallaghan near Thornton Hall, planes kept blazing overhead, and the Gardaí’s Public Order Unit vans kept patrolling the road to protect the site from protestors.

Roche says she does not have a problem with the presence of people seeking asylum.

Toole says the same but adds: “In terms of exiting a country if there is warfare or whatever, why are there no women?”

Sometimes, that’s because those unable to get visas have to travel dangerous routes to reach Europe, which is seen as riskier for women.

Accounts of women tell of how border guards or smugglers raped them as they tried to cross borders.

A review of research in 2023 by the German research institute Max Planck also noted that independent migration of women is also “hindered by challenges such as rigid gender norms and limited access to resources”.