Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish Mr. O’Leary and the other witnesses a good afternoon and thank them for appearing before us.

I thank Mr. O'Leary for his usual enigmatic appearance before the committee. I compliment him on the success of his business and there is no doubt we have a lot to be grateful with regard to what Ryanair has done for the airline market in Ireland over the past number of decades. I do not have the liberty of setting aside stuff that I know for the purposes of presenting to an Oireachtas committee and I feel it necessary to put some information into the room for the purpose of thrashing out some of the things we agree on.

For example, the first thing Mr. O'Leary said - and that I agreed with - is that the mismanagement of the airport is firmly at the feet of the DAA. Of that, I am entirely in agreement with Mr. O'Leary and I have stated on a number of occasions the DAA has had 17 years to plan for the growth of the airport, failed to do so and came up with an alternative plan at the last minute. It should be said that the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority, ANCA, already sided with Mr. O'Leary's views and removed the night flight cap in August 2022 and replaced it with the noise quota system and also moved the start time of 7 a.m. to 6 a.m. However, that is under appeal. That process will take its course and is outside of the control of the Oireachtas.

I want to stress the infrastructural items at the airport that Mr. O'Leary mentioned, whatever about an underground tunnel. The application that has been put before Fingal County Council which is approximately 7,500 pages long - and I am sure that people in Ryanair have had time to go through it but I am not one of them and I have not - include piers and gates. It is unfortunate it has taken DAA 17 years to get it together for long enough to put in the planning application to cater for the expansion of the airport that is required.

Another matter I agree with Mr. O'Leary on is that the passenger cap is a blunt instrument and not appropriate. I do not care how many passengers come in and out of Dublin Airport. I care about aircraft movements because they impact my constituents but they also benefit the entire nation because it results in lower fares.

I will question a couple of things Mr. O'Leary said. In the terminology he used he mentioned "aircraft lost to Dublin". I do not believe any aircraft have been lost to Dublin rather that there has been no growth by Ryanair at the airport. Is that a factual statement?