{"id":655627,"date":"2026-10-15T15:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/655627\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T15:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:52:10","slug":"eus-top-court-upholds-dublin-airport-passenger-cap-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/655627\/","title":{"rendered":"EU\u2019s top court upholds Dublin Airport passenger cap \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Regulators must take a 32 million a year limit on passengers at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dublin-airport\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dublin-airport\/\">Dublin Airport<\/a> into account when allocating take-off and landing slots to airlines there, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/european-court-of-justice\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/european-court-of-justice\/\">EU\u2019s top court<\/a> ruled on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Airlines challenged the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-aviation-authority\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-aviation-authority\/\">Irish Aviation Authority<\/a>\u2019s (IAA) decision to take the cap into account when allocating slots for winter 2024 at the airport, prompting an Irish judge to refer the issue to the Court of Justice EU (ECJ).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The court ruled on Thursday that the IAA must take the passenger limit into account when setting the terms for allocating slots at Dublin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The ruling will not affect the IAA\u2019s recent decision to add 28 new take off and landing slots at Dublin for next summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">And Minister for Transport, Darragh O\u2019Brien is likely to have ordered an increase in the limit to 40 million by next April, when the authority will determine how slots should be allocated for winter 2027\/28.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ryanair said in a statement that the ECJ\u2019s ruling highlighted the need for the Government to abolish the passenger cap.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Planners imposed the so-called passenger cap in 2007, limiting the total capacity of terminals one and two at the airport to 32 million people a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">As the legal action stalled the cap\u2019s implementation, Dublin Airport exceeded the 32 million figure. It handled 36.4 million people in 2025, a figure it is likely to top this year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">More to follow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regulators must take a 32 million a year limit on passengers at Dublin Airport into account when allocating&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,11900,40479,61,60,14647],"class_list":["post-655627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-dublin-airport","tag-european-court-of-justice","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-aviation-authority"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655627","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=655627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}