Airline chief says passenger cap at Dublin Airport will see higher fares for festive season
Appearing before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications on Wednesday, he again warned that Ryanair’s airfares to Dublin this Christmas could hit €1,000 return due to the passenger cap at the airport.
Dublin Airport currently can’t handle more than 32 million passengers a year due to a planning condition attached almost 20 years ago to the construction of Terminal 2.
While the DAA is aiming to have the cap raised, Mr O’Leary said it could be four years before a decision is made on that due to planning delays and likely legal challenges.
Ryanair has claimed the passenger cap is hindering its growth at the gateway and that it has already diverted aircraft away from Dublin so they can serve airports elsewhere in Europe.
Mr O’Leary has previously said the airline will likely be charging huge prices for its flights into Dublin over Christmas if the passenger cap isn’t raised or removed. Ryanair is likely to add some extra capacity at Belfast to facilitate passengers whose ultimate destinations are other places within Ireland.
“We have two aircraft based in Belfast,” Mr O’Leary told the committee. “Now, we think we can resolve some of the pressure this Christmas with our returning immigrants coming home for Christmas, but they’ll be coming home via Belfast.”
He claimed some people won’t be able to afford to come home for Christmas due to the high fares that Ryanair would charge if the passenger cap isn’t lifted. Senator Gerard Craughwell questioned if Ryanair was imposing a penalty on flyers in order to turn up the political heat on the issue.
Mr O’Leary claimed that transport issues “aren’t a high priority” for Transport Minister Eamon Ryan.
He claimed there were two ways the Government could quickly remove the passenger cap. “The quickest, easiest and most efficient solution is for the Minister of Transport to now move emergency legislation to amend the Planning and Development Act,” he claimed.
“The second option, and this can be pursued at the same time, is for the Minister for Housing and Local Government to use the Planning and Development Strategic Infrastructure Act 2006 to make airports strategic infrastructure and issue a ministerial direction to An Bord Pleanala to scrap the passenger cap.”
Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell, who represents the Fingal constituency, agreed the passenger cap is a “blunt instrument”, but insisted it would be impossible to bypass regulatory processes, and that attempting to do so would result in legal action.
“If we interfere in the planning process it will immediately end up in the courts,” he said. “It will be injuncted and it will be back to square one.”
The DAA has submitted a planning application for infrastructure development at Dublin Airport that includes a proposal to increase the passenger cap to 40 million. It has also indicated it may submit a separate planning application to raise the passenger cap to 36 million a year on an interim basis.
