Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Theraison d'être of this meeting is that I asked for it. We wanted to discuss the cap of 32 million passengers and its potential to have the airport closed on 15 December as a result of somebody coming along and saying the cap had been exceeded and no more people could come into or go out of the airport. Is there a definition anywhere of how a passenger is counted? Why are these Ethiopian flights counted at all? Why are transit passengers counted once but not twice?

Senator Doherty may be right that the criteria were not all about surface access. Passengers who have a 15-hour layover might leave the airport but the likelihood is the vast bulk of people in transit will hang around the airport and then leave. That happened on any flight where I have ever transferred. People try to be in the airport for the shortest time possible. Is there a definition of what the DAA does not have to count? It may be interpreting that it does not have to count the Ethiopian passengers because they do not even get off the planes and is counting other people who come through the airport once rather than twice, even though they came off one aircraft and got on another, while in the case of everyone else it is fairly clear cut. Is there any documentation from An Bord Pleanála, Fingal County Council, the planning authority or any planning regulator of how the DAA counts passengers?