Minister for Transport Minister Darragh O\u2019Brien will send a memo to Cabinet next month to begin the process of drafting legislation that will remove Dublin Airport\u2019s 32 million a year passenger cap.<\/p>\n
Planners imposed the cap in 2007 as a condition of allowing airport operator DAA to build a second terminal at Dublin, to address fears of traffic congestion. It has however been effectively suspended since the High Court referred questions raised in a legal challenge by airlines to the European courts.<\/p>\n
The cap has long been opposed by the airport\u2019s operator DAA as well as airlines including Ryanair, Europe\u2019s biggest carrier, and Aer Lingus. <\/p>\n
The Government was also warned over the summer that the US may limit Aer Lingus flights to its airports over the matter.<\/p>\n
Airlines for America, whose members include US and Canadian carriers that fly from the US to the Republic, maintains that the passenger limit at Dublin Airport breaches European Union-North American open-skies air-travel treaties.<\/p>\n
Shortly after taking office in January, Mr O\u2019Brien confirmed he had sought the advice of Attorney General Rossa Fanning on resolving the row through legislation. The Minister subsequently predicted this would be ready by the autumn.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the weekend, Mr O\u2019Brien said the meetings with Mr Fanning have taken place and that should the legislation proceed it will see a removal of the cap at Dublin Airport by the end of next year. <\/p>\n
He called the development \u201ca significant step forward\u201d in an interview with the Sunday Independent. \u201cI understand that the aviation sector \u2026 needs certainty and in the longer term that\u2019s what we\u2019re about providing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDublin Airport is a critical piece of national infrastructure. In the Programme for Government, we were very clear and we said that we would work with stakeholders to remove the airport cap and allow the airport to grow sustainably. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is a significant step forward and it is now on the legislative agenda to do that. I intend to advance legislation to enable the cap to be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien insisted growth at the airport would have to be considered alongside the concerns of local residents who have long been opposed to any lifting of the restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are respected in aviation across the world and we have a state-of-the-art airport that\u2019s now going to have, within the next number of years, a rail link, we have a better road network that\u2019s there, we have a second terminal and we\u2019ve got to grow the airport further,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo do that, we need to ensure that we don\u2019t have any false restrictions that are inhibiting that growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe growth we want is sustainable, taking into account the local area, and I have always said that the airport should operate under a good neighbour policy and this [legislation] won\u2019t change that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister for Transport Minister Darragh O\u2019Brien will send a memo to Cabinet next month to begin the process…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,72,10725,11900,61,60,1899],"class_list":["post-21132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aer-lingus","tag-business","tag-daa","tag-dublin-airport","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ryanair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}