DAA <\/a>has breached the cap in each of the last two years after strong passenger growth, triggering a Fingal County Council enforcement notice. However, enforcement is on hold pending litigation in the European courts.<\/p>\nAirlines that use Dublin Airport have long expressed frustration at the failure to tackle the cap. <\/p>\n
They include American carriers who last month filed a formal complaint with the US department of transport, claiming the cap breaches Irish legal obligations. <\/p>\n
The cap was imposed by planners in 2008 when they approved the airport\u2019s second terminal almost two decades ago. <\/p>\n
The Department of Transport said the general scheme empowers O\u2019Brien \u201cto make an order to amend or revoke\u201d the cap. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn advance of making an order, the Minister will engage with An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la who will carry out any relevant assessments required under EU law. The Minister will take the outcome of those assessments into account when making an order.\u201d<\/p>\n
The legislation will take planning responsibility for DAA away from Fingal and put it under the control of An Coimisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la. <\/p>\n
Still, DAA\u2019s current application to Fingal for new infrastructure to raise airport capacity to 40 million will proceed \u201cin parallel\u201d to the passage of the new law.<\/p>\n
The Minister\u2019s move met a dismissive response from Ryanair, which said progress was too slow and argued the new regime might not take force for another year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMiche\u00e1l Martin\u2019s programme for Government, published in January 2025, promised to abolish the cap \u2018as soon as possible\u2019. A two-year delay is not \u2018as soon as possible\u2019,\u201d Ryanair said.<\/p>\n
The airline said Martin should scrap the cap before he visits Washington for St Patrick\u2019s Day next month. \u201cMiche\u00e1l Martin has a 20-seat majority, he has wasted 14 months doing nothing,\u201d said Ryanair chief executive Michael O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n
DAA welcomed the move, saying the \u201coutdated\u201d cap was \u201cartificially restricting\u201d airport growth. \u201cStanding still as our population grows and other cities and countries compete to draw flights and destinations away from Dublin would be an own goal,\u201d DAA said. <\/p>\n
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, which is concerned about the impact of climate measures on farmers, said lifting the cap was \u201cobviously\u201d against climate policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cFarmers accepted the Government\u2019s assurances that this was going to be a national across-the-board drive to lower emissions but it\u2019s now quite clear that this is not the reality\u201d, said Denis Drennan, ICMSA president. <\/p>\n
Opportunity Green, a climate pressure group, accused O\u2019Brien of capitulation to powerful aviation interests and dismissed the move as a \u201cdisastrous\u201d decision. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt sends a clear signal that environmental limits are conditional and can be set aside when they become inconvenient,\u201d said Sorcha Tunney of Opportunity Green. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Government plans to scrap the contentious 32 million annual passenger cap at Dublin Airport inched forward with long-awaited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10725,15910,11900,12843,42,43,1899,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-291120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-daa","tag-darragh-o-brien","tag-dublin-airport","tag-dublin-airport-authority","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-ryanair","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291120","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=291120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}