Efforts continue to take the job of regulating Dublin Airport noise away from Fingal County Council

For 35 years William Dempsey lived in his house in north County Dublin peacefully, he says.

But in 2022, the airport’s new north runway entered operation. “Then planes started coming over my house,” Dempsey says.

Since then, he has immersed himself in local efforts to hold DAA, the company that operates Dublin Airport, to the rules on flight paths and night flights.

“I have to obey planning regulations, and if I am going to do it, I don’t see why a semi-state shouldn’t,” he says.

One obstacle to his – and his neighbours’ efforts – as he sees it, is the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority (ANCA), set up in 2019 to regulate noise related to Dublin Airport.

The problem, Dempsey and others say, is that both ANCA and Fingal County Council are financially dependent on the airport.

Liam O’Gradaigh, a committee member of the St Margaret’s The Ward Residents Association, says that because of this, local residents just don’t trust ANCA to act as an independent regulator.

“We’re just so frustrated with them,” O’Graidaigh says. “Really, really frustrated.”

The idea that ANCA’s and Fingal County Council’s financial dependence on the airport creates a conflict of interest, undermining trust in the regulator, creating at least a perception that it might not act independently, is not new.

This point was debated in the Oireachtas in 2018 when the government was setting it up. At that time, then Transport Minister Shane Ross rejected what he called “baseless accusations of conflict of interest”.

But the debate is not over. Labour TD Duncan Smith, who represents Dublin Fingal, introduced a private member bill last month to take the job of regulating noise at Dublin airport away from the local council and give it to the EPA.

Meanwhile, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has been trying to usher through the Oireachtas the government’s massive Planning and Development bill 2023, which includes a section on airport noise regulation.

O’Brien, a Fianna Fáíl TD representing Dublin Fingal, said during the debates over setting up ANCA that he believed there were better places to put it than at Fingal County Council.

However, the planning and development bill does not propose to move it to any of them.

“The Government made a decision in 2019 that Fingal County Council was the most appropriate location for ANCA and this position has not changed,” a Department of Housing spokesperson said on 20 June.

The conflict

ANCA is “a separate and independent Directorate within Fingal County Council”, it says.

Under the 2019 act that set up ANCA, the airport has to pay a levy to fund the regulator to regulate it. Last year, the invoice was €1.4 million.

As for Fingal County Council, commercial rates are expected to represent 44 percent of its income in 2024, according to its budget: about €155 million of a total of €362 million.

It’s unclear how much of this comes from Dublin Airport. But the Swords-Santry area, including the airport, contributes 43 percent of rates, according to the budget.

And the airport’s relationship with the council goes beyond the financial. They are entangled in other ways too.

AnnMarie Farrelly, then director of services for Fingal County Council’s Planning and Infrastructure Services Department, advised the Department of Transport in a November 2017 letter not to put ANCA at the council.

“Dublin Airport represents the most significant single economic entity in Fingal and the Dublin region,” she wrote. The council “has an extensive remit in both shaping and determining the strategic direction of Dublin Airport through its land use planning and associated functions”.

The council creates a county development plan, and local area plans, which guide how land in the county, including at the airport, can be developed, she wrote. It also decides on planning applications, she wrote, including from DAA.

“In light of the existing complex and varied role that Fingal County Council plays, as outlined above, it is considered that the Council may not be best placed to act as the ‘Competent Authority’” on airport noise regulation, Farrelly wrote.

She pointed to the 2014 EU regulation “on the establishment of rules and procedures with regard to the introduction of noise-related operating restrictions at Union airports”.

“The competent authority responsible for adopting noise-related operating restrictions should be independent of any organisation involved in the airport’s operation, air transport or air navigation service provision, or representing the interests thereof and of the residents living in the vicinity of the airport,” Farrelly quoted from the EU regulation.

She also wrote that the council did not have the “requisite competencies” to do the job.

“It may be that other independent bodies, which do not hold conflicting responsibilities in the provision of other functions that influence the development of Dublin Airport, should be considered for appointment as Competent Authority for the purpose of Regulation,” wrote Farrelly, who is now the council’s chief executive.

Nevertheless, the council got the gig.

DAA applied to Fingal County Council late last year for planning permission for an expansion, which would mean more flights, and therefore more noise. The airport and airlines that operate there have pushed local and national government, both quietly and publicly through media appearances, to approve the application.

Asked last month whether the council believed there was a conflict of interest, and whether there was a conflict between the council’s financial interest in seeing the airport expand, and the job of ANCA to regulate associated noise, a council spokesperson did not respond directly.

“Fingal County Council was designated as the competent authority for the regulation of aircraft noise at Dublin Airport through the Aircraft Noise (Dublin Airport) Regulation Act 2019,” he said.

Proposed solution

It is in this context, and in the run-up to a general election (date unknown), that Smith, the Labour TD, has introduced his bill to give the job of regulating noise at Dublin Airport to the EPA.

Smith said on 20 June that he doesn’t mean to imply by introducing the bill that ANCA has been doing a bad job.

“We’ve just never been satisfied with it being at Fingal County Council,” he said, pointing to the council’s financial dependence on the airport, and its planning entanglements too.

“It’s just for the gold standard of regulation, it should not be at Fingal County Council,” he said. “The EPA would be a more natural fit and a more natural home. They are trusted and they are independent.”

Dempsey, who lives under a flight path, and O’Gradaigh, of the St Margaret’s The Ward Residents Association, said they also thought the EPA would be a good fit.

“The EPA has the resources to do it properly,” O’Gradaigh said.

“I think they’d be more impartial,” Dempsey said. “And they have the scientific knowledge and expertise.”

Smith said he did not expect his bill to become law. But he wants to demonstrate that Labour is serious about the issue. “It’s not just a line in a manifesto,” he said.

And he also hopes, in the long term, that if the legislation is written, and introduced, and noticed, a government will adopt it – or at least its ideas – and get it over the line.

“When it’s out there it can get talked about and maybe absorbed into other parties’ manifestoes,” he said.

However, former Green Party Councillor Ian Carey said that just moving the job to the EPA wouldn’t solve all the problems with noise at Dublin Airport. “Moving to EPA without beefing up the law would be pretty useless,” he said.

Carey said he’d want to see the law changed to require “Tighter monitoring, prescribed timelines for decisions, clearer requirements to avoid noise sensitive infrastructure like schools etc.,” he said.

“Ian’s absolutely correct,” said Smith, the Labour TD. “Just the move won’t fix it, there needs to be tougher legislation. This is not a silver bullet.”

At the moment, the government’s planning and development bill simply incorporates the wording of the 2019 act that set up ANCA, “with minor modifications”, according to a Department of Housing spokesperson.  
“There are no substantive changes to the provisions in the Bill, compared to the current Act,” he said.