PASSENGER CAP IS TOO LOW SAYS TAOISEACH
Leo Varadkar has backed proposals to change the 32 million passenger cap at Dublin Airport.
He suggested that if the number is not increased, Ireland could lose out on vital routes and airlines will choose to operate out of other countries.
DAA confirmed on Friday that it will submit an application to Fingal County Council to grow beyond the current 32 million cap “in order to support the population increase and continue to enable new jobs growth and connectivity for Ireland”.
Some 2.8 million people transited through Dublin Airport in October alone.
Asked in Seoul, South Korea, if he supported the proposal to increase the cap, the Taoiseach said that he did.
“I appreciate it has to go through a planning process but Dublin Airport is the gateway to the country,” Mr Varadkar explained.
“We are an island. You can do so much by ship but aviation is the way we get off the island to vote for trade and for personal travel.
“Capping that, I think, creates a difficulty.
“I’d like to see other airports do well too. It’s good to see passenger numbers rising in Knock and Shannon and Cork.
“But I know the reality from my time as transport minister that airlines will fly where they want to.
“It’s not the case that you couldn’t tell somebody who might be thinking of starting direct flights from Ireland to India or Ireland to Brazil, ‘go to a different airport instead’.
“They won’t. They’ll go to a different country instead.
“There’s a real risk that if we cap flights at Dublin Airport at 32 million, we will lose routes, we won’t get new routes that we would otherwise have got.”
Asked if he would support a proposal to increase the cap to 40 million passengers a year, Mr Varadkar said that he did not “have a figure in mind”.
He said in “an ideal world” you could cap Dublin at 32m and use the capacity that exists in other Irish airports for other flights.
However, he said that in the “real world” the airlines decide where they want to fly and will move to other countries.
We are an island, and aviation is the way we trade and travel