Fingal’s “flip-flop” on airport passenger-cap increase was in line with procedures, councillors say

Fingal councillors have defended the council’s Planning Department after DAA Chief Executive Kenny Jacobs called it “inconsistent” in its approach.

An email shows that the council did tell DAA the airport operator’s application to raise the passenger cap was valid – before it publicly declared that same application invalid.

“I can confirm that application reg. ref. F24A/1178E has been declared valid,” says a 6 January email from Fingal’s Planning Department to DAA’s planning consultant.

Then on 14 January, the council released a statement saying “The Planning Authority has informed the daa that their application to raise the capacity of Dublin Airport to 36 million passengers per annum is invalid.”

DAA released a statement on 26 January saying “declaring daa’s application to increase the cap to 36 million a year as invalid after twice confirming it was valid shows the inconsistent approach of FCC’s planners”.

The airport operator also included a quotation from Jacobs suggesting that the power to decide whether and how the airport can expand its operations should be taken away from Fingal County Council.

“We believe evaluating complex aviation matters should be decided at a national level and are calling on the new government to urgently reclassify Dublin Airport as strategic national infrastructure in the national interest,” it says.

However, a manual from the Office of the Planning Regulator says that “A planning authority may determine that a particular planning application does not contain the requisite information and is invalid at two critical stages”.

It appears that, at the first stage, Fingal confirmed the application’s validity. But once they got to the second stage, they found it did not meet the necessary tests and declared it invalid.

Events

DAA applied to Fingal County Council in 2023 for planning permission for an expansion, and an increase in the annual passenger cap, which currently set at 32 million.

The airport and airlines that operate there have pushed local and national government, both quietly and publicly through media appearances, to approve the application.

Even as the pressure built, the council went back to DAA and asked for more information on its application for the expansion. The months passed.

In December 2024, DAA lodged an application to just increase the annual passenger cap at the airport from 32 million to 36 million – without an airport expansion.

The council responded with a 23 December letter that said, “I wish to acknowledge receipt of your recent planning application received on 20-Dec-2024.”

“This acknowledgement is issued pursuant to the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 (as amended), and is subject to the site notice and appropriate fee complying with the said Regulations,” it said.

“If in the event that the site notice and appropriate fee is found not to comply, the application will be declared invalid and returned to the applicant,” it said.

Then, in that 6 January email with that same letter attached again, the spokesperson explicitly says the “no-build” application “has been declared valid”.

And then on 14 January, Fingal publicly said the opposite.

Sequence

A letter that formally acknowledged receipt of DAA’s no-build planning application was generated by the council’s planning system on 23 December, said Brian Murray, a senior executive officer at Fingal’s Planning and Strategic Infrastructure.

“But it was not emailed to the DAA’s planning consultant until [3 January],” Murray said at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords area committee on Thursday.

An automatic out-of-office email from DAA’s planning consultant was sent back to the council, explaining that they wouldn’t be available until 6 January, Murray said.

The council also had record of a phone call on 23 December with DAA’s planning consultant, Murray said.

“This was instigated by an official within the Planning Department who had a query in relation to a question that was not answered on the application form,” he said.

That issue was resolved, Murray said.

Following the out-of-office response from the DAA planning consultant, the council re-sent the acknowledgement on the morning of 6 January, documents show.

In the body of the email, a planning official said that the application “has been declared valid.”

The planning consultant replied, “Happy New Year to you, and many thanks for the confirmation on the validity of the Operational Application.”

The Office of the Planning Regulator’s manual says a planning department can decide an application is invalid at two stages, firstly “shortly following receipt of the application when undertaking the desktop validation exercise”. This application passed that stage.

However, the manual says an application can also be declared invalid “when the application site, and the site notice, are checked”.

It goes on to say that “The regulations set down strictly that planning applications are invalid where: a) the public notices and planning application documentation has not been complied with or where the notice in the newspaper or the site notice is misleading or inadequate for the information of the public.”

In its decision, the council said that the description of the nature and extent of the proposed development in public notices was a subjective interpretation of existing planning conditions.

DAA had also used two different methodologies to define the existing cap of 32m persons per annum and the proposed 36m, the decision says. “This is confusing and/or misleading,” it says.

Defence

Councillors at two separate area committee meetings last week refuted DAA CEO Kenny Jacobs’s statements, and defended their council’s Planning Department.

At the Howth-Malahide Area Committee on Wednesday, 15 January, independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin tabled a motion to express confidence in the Planning Department.

Particularly of concern to Guerin was the commentary in the media that Fingal’s Planning Department was in disarray, he said. “I think that that was a very unfair comment to our planners and our staff.”

Guerin’s motion was agreed by the area committee.

The next day, independent Councillor Cathal Boland, at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee meeting, said Jacobs’ statement was misleading the public.

Jacobs had suggested that his application was deemed valid by the council twice, Boland said.

“But really what he was talking about was the number of times the piece of paper, the original piece of documentation from the council, was circulated more than once at their request,” he said.

That is what caused the confusion, he said. “It wasn’t that it was sent out twice in terms of being a new validation. It was an acknowledgement that an application had been lodged.”

They then decided that this was two validations, but this wasn’t a validation really, he said. “It says in the document if it is found to comply, and it didn’t comply.”