Dublin Airport might breach its passenger cap this year, and the blame game has already begun

As the year wears on, it’s looking possible that the number of passengers using Dublin Airport will top the 32 million limit, and the blame game has already begun.

Recently, Kenny Jacobs, the chief executive of DAA, told an Oireachtas committee he was “concerned that we will be forced into a breach of the 32 million passenger cap”.

“The passenger number is determined by the slot process, which is governed and regulated by the IAA [Irish Aviation Authority],” Jacobs said. An airport “slot” is permission for a plane to arrive or depart from an airport.

A local residents’ group also says the IAA has played a role in the breach of the passenger cap. “The breach of the passenger cap has been facilitated by the IAA in over-allocating slots,” the St Margaret’s The Ward Residents Group has said.

But the IAA says in a report on the issue that, in the end, “The IAA is not responsible for ensuring that daa complies with its planning conditions, and, in the particular case of the 32mppa Conditions.”

DAA in December applied for planning permission to expand the airport and lift the cap, and it and airlines have been piling on the pressure for Fingal County Council to approve this application.

The company has said that increasing the cap is crucial to Ireland’s economic prospects, and to getting more people where they want to go.

In a similar fight in the Netherlands, the global aviation industry, the US government and the EU Commission successfully weighed in against a cap.

If DAA does get permission to expand the airport and increase the number of flights and passengers it can handle, that would mean more greenhouse gas emissions, according to documents submitted with its planning application.

It would also mean more noise for people who live near the airport, as well as those who live a distance away, but under flight paths.

Caps, caps, caps

An Bord Pleanála set the passenger cap in 2008 because of transportation capacity constraints on getting passengers to and from the airport.

Fingal County Council has already issued planning enforcement proceedings against DAA, the company that runs Dublin Airport, for breaching the cap in 2023.

Local Labour TD Duncan Smith raised this during a 19 June Oireachtas transportation committee hearing. “The cap is being breached. That is the reality,” he said.

But Jacobs said the DAA hadn’t breached the cap. It’s all in whether passengers flying into and out of the airport count.

“Last year the figure was 31.9 million people, net of transits and only single-counting transfers,” Jacobs said.

Now, for 2024, here we go again.

In a submission to the IAA, the St Margaret’s The Ward Residents Group wrote that “Dublin Airport is on course to breach the 32m cap even further in 2024.”

Since the start of this year, a “coordination committee” including airlines that use the airport, and DAA, have been talking to the IAA about slot allocations for winter 2024, what the cap means, and what – if anything – should be done to abide by it.

Some members argued they should ignore the 32 million passenger cap “until final clarification as to their meaning and effect is obtained from a court”, according to an IAA report.

“The Coordination Committee members voted overwhelmingly (93%) in support of the proposition/view that [it] is ambiguous, and should not be ‘considered’,” according to the IAA’s report on what to do about all this for winter 2024.

Only DAA and the airline TUI were holdouts on this, the report says.

Most of the committee members also disagreed with the proposition that “passenger growth should be paused” for winter 2024, with just DAA, Swiss and TUI voting for a pause, the report says.

They also voted (92 percent) against setting a seasonal cap for winter 2024, with DAA voting in favour, according to the IAA report.

Nevertheless, the IAA in the end decided to introduce a 14.4 million seat cap for winter 2024, “which we recognise as necessary to take account of the capacity constraint provided for by the 32mppa Conditions”, the report says.

Who can stop a breach?

In its submission to this process, the St Margaret’s The Ward Residents Group says the IAA bears responsibility.

“If the slots and additional seats were not available, then these breaches would not take place,” it says. “The IAA is complicit in breaching the planning conditions and must accept full responsibility for their actions.”

In its report, the IAA writes that “Overall, we note that, on the one hand, residents consider that we have estimated the seat cap on an overly generous basis, whereas on the other hand, airlines consider that we have estimated it on an overly conservative basis.”

“If daa considers that further actions are or may be necessary to ensure compliance with the 32mppa Conditions in 2024 or in future years, it is for daa to determine what those actions might be,” it says.

Following up on Jacobs’ comments at the Oireachtas committee last month, is it DAA’s view that the IAA has allocated too many slots and DAA is powerless to stop the 32 million person passenger cap from being breached in 2024?

“Our inputs to the slot co-ordination process are on the IAA’s website (Documents – Slots (iaa.ie)) which sets out in full our position,” a DAA spokesperson said.

DAA’s April submission to the discussions on what the IAA should do about slots for winter 2024 suggested also looking at summer 2024.

“If compliance is to be achieved in the 2024 Winter months, daa estimates a reduction of 25% in seats could be necessary in both November and December to ensure passenger numbers remain in compliance with the 32mppa Conditions,” DAA said.

“If the IAA were to consider reductions in Summer 24 as well as Winter 24”, then the reductions could be spread out over a longer period, with a smaller percentage reduction per month, it said.

But the IAA said no. “The parameters for the S24 season are not within the scope of this decision. They were set in October 2023, following a consultation period which closed for representations eight months ago,” it said.

Beyond 2024

DAA hopes it’ll get planning permission for its proposed expansion in “within months”, Jacobs told the Oireachtas committee last month.

“Obviously, it will be appealed and the matter will go to An Bord Pleanála,” he said. “Hopefully, it will take two years from us submitting our case to An Bord Pleanála making a determination.”

DAA wants to see the cap lifted, rather than increased to a higher figure, Jacobs said.

“Ultimately, the infrastructure application is to lift the cap of 32 million passengers and allow us to build infrastructure that allows us to grow,” he said.

While waiting for a decision on the planning application DAA submitted in December, it might submit a different one as well, Jacobs said.

“We may consider an operational application,” he said. “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.”

UPDATE: This article was updated on 18 July at 11.11am to remove a quotation from an IAA spokesperson expressing a point colloquially that was more precisely expressed with a quotation from an IAA report.