Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is about the user experience of those who have to use the south gates on a regular basis. These are people who come in late at night from a long way away and, notwithstanding paying high air fares, do not have tunnel access or an air bridge. Ireland is renowned for its damp weather conditions, so it is not a good user experience. Mr. Jacobs said that Dublin Airport is an airport for Ireland. I put it to him that it is damaging to the image of Ireland to have somebody who paid for a first-class ticket having to walk a considerable distance in the rain, in the morning or evening, to get to the terminal.

From a business perspective, DAA is sweating the asset. I think it has over-sweated the asset. Frankly, the cap is appropriate, not just for the landside but from an airside capacity perspective as well. The DAA will have to look more broadly than the airport when it comes to the landside. If Mr. Jacobs takes himself onto the M50 - I do not know where he lives, but I am sure he has to use the motorway or some of his staff do - he will see it is at capacity or close to it. TII has introduced what is effectively a demand-management perspective to reduce speed limits at certain times to manage the capacity, and there are proposals and talks about having a more progressive approach to charging for use at certain times of the day. That says the supporting infrastructure outside the airport is creaking as well.

I cannot fathom why there has not been more joined-up thinking regarding roads and airports from a State perspective, which looks at the latent capacity we have in our other airports. Rather than building more capacity at Dublin Airport, we should build a high-speed rail link that connects Dublin Airport to Dublin city centre and runs on to the city of Limerick and Shannon Airport. That is done in other countries. It used to be the policy of a previous EU transport Commissioner. It made complete sense.

I get Mr. Jacobs's point that Dublin Airport is important for Ireland, but this is about the way the DAA and the policy are going. He said that people from the 32 counties are using Dublin Airport. They do not need to. They should not need to, if the cap were introduced appropriately, because a lot more could be done in the south. I listened to Mr. Jacobs previously, and it is a position taken by others, say that we will lose these flights to Ireland in the same way Schiphol lost to Paris. Will we lose to Manchester or Edinburgh? I am not so sure about that. They are not exactly major hubs. Manchester is certainly not and Edinburgh, to a large extent, is not either. Let us not forget we are still an island. Somebody who lands in Schiphol can get from there to Paris by train. In that instance, it may be a more favourable comparison.

I have to believe that if Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports worked in much closer co-operation, some of the pressure on Dublin Airport could be reduced. There is effectively a self-fulfilling prophecy at the moment, where if there is more demand we have to build more and if we build more we will have to increase more. There is no competition with Dublin, quite frankly. No other airport can compete with it. That is a fact, as regards the size and scale it can do. If we thought about the passenger and the economic dividend throughout the country, we could have a much more joined-up approach to the management of our current asset. Some 3 million or 4 million more passengers to the likes of Shannon Airport would make a huge difference to the development of the region. It would reduce the number of people who have to travel from the mid-west to Dublin to get access to other parts of Europe. It would help to balance things and take away some of the pressure on the landside of Dublin Airport.

Dublin Airport can have its development plan as well. Dublin will grow as a city, but the regions can grow as well. I would like to hear Mr. Jacobs's thoughts on that. I recognise that Dublin Airport now has to get rid of some of its transit passengers, but the DAA is still bidding for business to service aircraft, which need to land for technical stops in Ireland, at Dublin Airport. No passengers are either getting off or getting on.