Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport
Impact of Passenger Cap at Dublin Airport on Ryanair's Business and Operations: Ryanair
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Apologies have been received from Senator Doherty.
On behalf of the committee, I am pleased to welcome from Ryanair Mr. Michael O'Leary, chief executive officer, Mr. Jason McGuinness, chief commercial officer, and Mr. Eoin Kealy, director of regulatory and competition.
On privilege, witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.
Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not be able to permit any member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside of the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making their contribution to the meeting, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.
I invite Mr. O'Leary to make his opening statement.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach. It is a pleasure to be back before the committee. I am joined by Jason McGuinness, Ryanair's chief commercial officer, and Eoin Kealy, our director of regulatory affairs. This is a timely meeting. With the committee's permission, we will use a couple of brief slides, which I think is easier than submitting a written presentation, setting out where the issues are with the traffic cap at Dublin Airport, which is heavily constraining our traffic growth there as well as at Cork and Shannon and in the rest of the country.
We are Europe's largest and fastest-growing airline. This year, we will grow by about 16 million passengers, from 184 million in 2023, to 200 million in 2024. The tragedy as regards Ireland is that none of that 16 million passenger growth is coming here.
The cap at Dublin Airport is forcing us to send aircraft, jobs, routes and traffic overseas. What we are doing this summer is operating from 95 bases and serving 40 countries. As I said, not alone are we going to carry 200 million passengers this year but we have very exciting plans to take delivery of about 300 new aircraft and grow to 300 million passengers over the next eight years. However again, unless that traffic cap is moved at Dublin Airport, none of that growth will be coming to Ireland. As we are based here, it has always been our policy to deliver growth in routes, traffic and jobs in Ireland but at the moment we are being impeded from doing so.
Post Covid, we are the only airline in Europe that has recovered and grown significantly. Our traffic is up 35%. In pre-Covid times, we were carrying 150 million passengers and as I said, this year, that has increased to 200 million despite the challenges of Boeing air delivery delays, higher-priced fuel and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. We are making very strong market-share gains across the EU except in Ireland. In Portugal, Italy, Spain, Poland, etc., Ryanair is now the number one airline in all of those major markets. The aircraft that were lost to Dublin this year have gone to Copenhagen, Morocco, Jordan and Albania as we expand into new countries and new markets that we did not serve before.
The tragedy of all of this is that from an environmental point of view, all of this growth is taking place on new aircraft that carry 20% more passengers, burn 20% less fuel and are 50% quieter than our existing fleet of aircraft. This is growth that is environmentally friendly, sustainable and dramatically quieter than our existing aircraft, as some of the Fingal Deputies in the room can attest. Despite this, we are exporting all this growth to other countries around Europe, which frankly are laughing at the failure of Ireland's aviation policy. What I fail to understand is why we are capped in Dublin at 32 million passengers a year, despite having just opened the second runway at a cost of €300 million, which gives Dublin Airport the capacity to handle 60 million passengers a year. Basically we opened up a second runway and are now being told we cannot use it. We are trying to encourage the Green Party Ministers for transport and for tourism to adopt policies for growth on environmentally efficient aircraft but we cannot get replies to our growth proposals. We work on an all-island basis, which entails flying to seven airports and having four bases. We have a new base opening up in Belfast. In the Republic of Ireland, however, sadly we are delivering no growth because of the cap at Dublin Airport.
I will touch briefly on Dublin. The traffic cap of 32 million in place at Dublin Airport was imposed by An Bord Pleanála in 2007, at a time when they opened the second terminal. The concern at that stage was that the roads around Dublin Airport would become blocked and choked because there was no public infrastructure at the time for getting people there. The metro was intended to come and rescue us all. I will be dead by the time the Dublin metro finally gets here, if it ever gets to Dublin Airport. Nevertheless, Dublin Airport's traffic has doubled during the period between 2007 and 2024, but more than 20% of those passengers are now coming by bus. Public transport bus connections to and from the airport are solving the problem which was at the heart of this concern back in 2007. We do not need a traffic cap. There is no road access crisis at Dublin Airport and sadly, the DAA, which continues to mismanage the airport, has had 17 years to apply for a planning exemption to get this artificial cap lifted and it has not done so. It quite suits the DAA to say it is full at the moment, as it will be putting up its fees by 45% over the next four years.
Between 2023 and 2026, the passenger charges at Dublin Airport will go up by 45%. Dublin Airport will not open additional car parking around the facility. They keep misleading the public that if they could only buy somebody else's carpark, all would be well, yet Dublin Airport owns over 150 acres of land around the area. During the summer, at an instant as many of those fields could be opened as necessary to create low-cost parking solutions. Alternatively, tarmac could be put over some of those fields as planning permission is not necessary to do that. Additional car parking could simply be created but the DAA wants to increase airport fees. It wants to constrain car parking and increase parking charges. That is what we call regulatory gaming.
The most egregious example of this currently, is that they are planning to build a four-lane tunnel - equivalent of a Dublin Port tunnel - under a taxiway at Dublin Airport, going out to the west apron. There is nothing on at the west apron, it is simply a way of spending another €250 million so that it can go back to the regulator and ask it to increase the fees again. The DAA is using these artificial constraints such as the traffic cap, which is a planning constraint and the car park which is a constraint of entirely its own making to inflate charges and then it is going to blow €250 million. At a time when we need more gates and more facilities in the terminal buildings, it wants to build a tunnel to nowhere so it can explain to the regulator that it has to spend all that money on new facilities and therefore needs higher charges again. Critical to this is that we have just opened a second runway at Dublin Airport. We have runway capacity for 60 million passengers and yet the day we opened it, we discovered there is a planning rule from 2007 that says we cannot use it.
There is going to be a critical issue here this Christmas. I would urge all the politicians here to be aware of it. We have applied for all of our slots for this winter, including the extra slots that we routinely use for extra flights during the October school mid-terms and for Christmas, Cheltenham and the rugby internationals. We did not get any of those extra slots this year because we are at the traffic cap. The fares to and from Dublin this Christmas will probably beapproximately €500 one way; about €1,000 return. The Government and politicians are going to get the blame for it which suits me fine. If Dublin Airport is capped, we will make out like bandits. I will make a fortune this Christmas. Airlines are traditionally criticised for putting up fares at Christmas. This is not something we actually do because we are busy at that time of year. All the inbound fares to Dublin are high, but we keep them down by adding 270,000 extra flights. This is our capacity for winter 2024; we have applied as normal for our winter schedule, which is the seven-day-a-week schedule, and that is 6.4 million seats. That is approved. We also have applied as we do every winter, for 90,000 extra seats for the October school mid-term, 270,000 extra seats for the Christmas uplift, 7,000 extra seats for the Six Nations, 130,000 extra seats for St. Patrick's Day next March, 10,000 extra seats for Cheltenham and 7,000 extra seats for Premier League. These have all been rejected because we are up against the planning cap. As a result, fares for families reuniting at Christmas - people coming home here at Christmas - are going to double and triple. This will mean €500 one-way fares and €1,000 return fares to Dublin, unless the Government moves to fix this cap. We can move some of these extra flights up to Belfast and some will ask why they cannot go to Shannon or to Cork, but the answer is that the inbound passengers do not want to go to Shannon or to Cork.
The cap is also limiting Ireland Inc.'s growth. I met the transport Minister in our offices on 7 March and we put in front of him the most ambitious traffic and tourism growth initiative that this country has ever seen. We gave him a plan where over the next six years, from 2024 to 2030, Ryanair will grow Dublin from 15 million to 20 million passengers, which is a growth of about 33%. In Cork, we would increase the number of base aircraft from three to seven aircraft and grow from 2 to 4.5 million passengers. At Shannon, we would grow from three to six based aircraft and take Shannon from 1.3 to 3 million passengers. At Knock, where we think there is a potential in the next year or two to open a base, we would add two aircraft, doubling Knock's traffic from 700,000 to 1.5 million. In total, if the cap is lifted from Dublin Airport, Ryanair is willing to invest and grow passenger traffic in Ireland from 20 to 30 million passengers over the next six years. Sadly, we have not yet received a reply from the transport Minister to the submission made on 7 March. We have had no reply, no action and no movement on the cap. I am somewhat using the good offices of this committee to raise this issue and call for urgent action. We need a fix to this cap. It will get lifted, but the problem is the planning process is going to take three or four years to fix. To give a brief overview of what Dublin Airport is planning to spend €250 million on, it will be on where the tunnel will go, under the taxiway, between the two runways.
Pier D, which is where we are, is on the eastern apron. It was building a port tunnel of two lanes going each way underneath the taxiway. Presently, you can drive across that taxiway. The only things on the left-hand side of that slide are the fire department and the park for cargo planes and private aircraft. Therefore, the parcels and the rich can drive across the taxiway, or they can drive around the runways if needs be. Yet, my passengers - and the constituents of the committee members - do not need to be paying higher fares so we can ferry the parcels and a few rich executives under a four-lane tunnel under a taxiway when currently in Cologne Bonn Airport you can drive across the taxiway. They can drive across this taxiway as well. This is the kind of mismanagement that goes on at Dublin Airport, which has not addressed a planning issue for 17 years because it was too busy designing a port tunnel to go under a taxiway when that is not necessary and when none of the airlines wish to pay for it.
In conclusion, Irish tourism needs action. Dublin Airport - and I know we are going to get into some of the Fingal County Council issues - is a national gateway for Ireland. It is not a Fingal County Council planning issue. It is not a local issue to be determined by people in Fingal. The Government should lead. It should not follow Fingal County Council or, with greatest of respect, a couple of NIMBYs in north County Dublin. To demonstrate what I am speaking about here, last year, 26,000 noise complaints were submitted to Dublin Airport. Some 24,500, or 90%, of those 26,000 noise complaints came from one person. He is entitled to his view, but really, he should not be allowed to constrain the growth of traffic, tourism and jobs on an island on the periphery of Europe.
Mr. Eoin Kealy is present. There are two simple legal mechanisms that can be used to scrap this airport cap. The transport Minister can take action, as can the housing Minister, who has powers under various areas of legislation to expedite the lifting of this cap. While the planning process takes its course, they must scrap the €250 million total to nowhere because we do not need it. I call on Dublin Airport to use that money to expand the terminals, expand the gates and, above all, to now expand the car parks for this summer or next summer. They should stop telling people that the car parks are full and they should stop putting up the charges. They should build more car parking. They own enough land around Dublin Airport so they should use it. They should lower the Dublin charges.
Interestingly, the DAA’s charges regime was rejected by the IAA. It was asked to go back and look at it because its environmental incentive scheme does not work. In actuality, it penalises the most efficient environmental aircrafts, which are our new Boeing 737 MAX 8-200s, which we have now sent overseas. We are operating the slightly older, smaller and slightly noisier aircrafts in Dublin because the environmental incentive actually penalises greener aircraft. Ireland needs tourism. Ireland needs jobs. We need low-fare access. We do not need traffic caps and we need the Government to take urgent action quickly and now.
I will finish on one concluding point. The national aviation policy has three pillars. The first is to enhance Ireland’s connectivity and competitive access. We cannot do that with a 32 million passenger cap. Second is to foster the growth of aviation enterprise to support job creation and to position Ireland as a recognised global leader in aviation. Nobody in Europe thinks Ireland is a global leader in aviation. They are all laughing at us because we are exporting all these aircraft and jobs to other European countries. This is because Dublin says that it is full and that it cannot take any more. Third is to maximise the contribution of the aviation sector to Ireland's economic growth and development. We can and will invest and add more economic growth and development, but we cannot do it while Dublin Airport has a cap.
Before I conclude, I will ask Mr. Kealy to very briefly detail the two legal mechanisms we believe that can be dealt with to address this cap while the planning process plays out.
Mr. Eoin Kealy:
I thank the committee for its time. As Mr. O’Leary has said, we have identified two legislative solutions the Government can act on right away to fix this cap. The quickest, easiest and most efficient solution to this is for the Minister for Transport to now table emergency legislation to amend the Planning and Development Act to scrap the passenger cap. He could do this right away. Now is the perfect time because a planning and development Bill is before the Dáil. More than 800 amendments have been tabled to the planning and development Bill. They could add one more now and I understand it is being pushed very quickly through the Dáil. They could add one more amendment to scrap the cap and get the Bill passed. Now is actually the perfect time.
The second option - and this can be pursued at the same time - is for the Minister of housing and local government to use the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 to designate airports as strategic infrastructure. He can issue a ministerial direction to An Bord Pleanála to scrap the passenger cap. We know this issue will come before An Bord Pleanála at some point, so it is best to issue the direction now so that when An Bord Pleanála gets this on its desk it can right away. As soon as it hits its desk, it can scrap the cap. Those are two immediate solutions the Government can pursue at this point.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank both representatives very much. We will now move to members. I thank them for that very informative presentation. We as a committee wanted to bring the witnesses before the committee because this issue was being spoken about on the radio. The Minister, the representatives themselves, Claire Byrne and the newspapers were all talking about it, and we felt it was important that we air the issue here. I thank them for responding to the invitation. We also invited Aer Lingus, which is not in the position to attend at the moment and that is its prerogative.
The first person on the speaking roster is Deputy Cathal Crowe. He may go ahead.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome our guests from Ryanair and congratulate them on the onward and upward growth of their company. I want to home in on just a few points. First, regarding the planning cap, we are aware of other European countries where there are environmental noise output caps. Is the planning cap on passenger numbers unique to Ireland? Has Ryanair encountered this in any other countries? Has it had to fight battles in other countries or jurisdictions to get beyond this?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Having a planning cap that is based on a road access restriction is unique to Ireland and, in fact, to Dublin. Noise regulations are operating at most European airports. Most noise regulations measure noise, but we have this blunt instrument that says we will be limited to 65 night-time flights. Night-time is defined as 12 midnight to 7 a.m. That is naught, because aircrafts today are 50% quieter than they were ten years ago. Having a number of flights is completely ineffective because it does not do anything to reduce noise. What we should do in Dublin is measure noise, which is what the airlines have been calling for over many years. As aircrafts get quieter, we believe that the definition of night-time should be moved from midnight to 6.30 a.m. and not 7 a.m. That is because most of our first wave departures take place after 6.30 a.m. and before 7 a.m. Yet, Dublin is the only airport that has a 17 year old planning restriction that relates to road access going to and from the airport.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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There is merit to the two legislative proposals the representatives are suggesting. I am also conscious that the last time the Dublin Airport Authority was before the committee it had been lodging planning that week. It then advised us that it could take a minimum of two years for that to go through the whole process. This is because there is inevitably going to be an appeal to An Bord Pleanála and possibly a judicial review. Many residents contact our committee. There is going to be a long campaign here. Although both suggestions the representatives made technically could happen with some relative ease in the Houses of the Oireachtas, they would only provide a framework through which An Bord Pleanála can move this further along. We could potentially still be locked into a two-year cycle of this capping. Have the representatives considered that? Has that come up in their talks with the Minister or the DAA? No matter what they say here today, it could take two years or more before a cap is lifted.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
First, it will not be two. We think it is going to be four. There is absolutely no question that whatever decision An Bord Pleanála makes will be appealed and there will be High Court judicial review. It will be four years before this gets fixed. I do not believe we can have a credible transport Minister or credible transport and aviation policy if they are to be hijacked by a local planning issue for the next four years. There are two immediate instruments that can be used by either the transport Minister or the housing Minister. We are calling for this because Dublin Airport is a piece of national infrastructure. We must have a measure that says we can raise, ignore or suspend the cap while this planning application takes four years. Nobody believes that at the end of the planning Dublin Airport will be restricted to 32 million passengers per year.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Is it therefore the case that, with inaction, Ryanair fears that it will be subjected to this cap for four years?
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Sure. I refer to the passengers and those who wish to use the service.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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On the last day when Dublin Airport Authority was before the committee I was quite critical of its approach. I feel - and I am sure the representatives will disagree with me - that it has gotten the ahead of the Government on this. This is because a national aviation strategy policy review is due to happen this year. It came in with planning permission. It is a semi-State. It has gazumped the Government in some ways. It came in with planning application for expansion and the whole remodification of Dublin Airport and Cork Airport. This is at a time when we are preparing to review aviation overall on the island.
If we were to go back and start from scratch again, we might not have five airports on the west coast and one on the east, but it is what it is. Does Mr. O'Leary feel that the DAA has been getting ahead of the Government and Ryanair on this?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
To be fair, no. It is not getting ahead of the Government. The DAA is doing what it always does and feathering its own nest. Its traffic is capped. That is the DAA’s fault. The DAA should have made this planning application five or ten years ago and got the cap lifted. As usual, there was inaction. Let us say that nothing can be done for the next four years and traffic remains capped at 32 million passengers per year. Why would the DAA’s primary plan be to spend €250 million building a tunnel that goes nowhere? If the airport’s traffic is capped for the next four years, stop wasting money on facilities like a tunnel that none of the airlines at Dublin Airport supports. The DAA should be trying to expand some of the gate facilities and customer-facing facilities within the terminal building. It is a dereliction by the DAA’s management that it has not expanded car parking availability at Dublin Airport since last summer.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Is it not somewhat absurd that we need to fully expand Dublin in order to take in more passengers, yet without putting an extra brick or piece of steel or glass in place in Shannon, Shannon could double its passenger count? It is already configured for that. Is that not wasteful and unsustainable? Could Ryanair play a role in providing new routes in and out of Shannon?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We have already offered. We made a submission to the Minister for Transport on 7 March that would grow traffic at Shannon by 50% over the next six years and traffic in Cork by 100% over the next five years. Unless we grow at Dublin, though, we will not be able to sustain the number of aircraft and routes, or put in more of them, at Cork, Shannon and Knock. We have to grow both sides of the country.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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My next question is on a matter that we discussed before the meeting. Ryanair has some fabulous route offerings to Spain, but its German market seems lacking. That market is well served out of Dublin but not Shannon. When we repeatedly look at the tourism figures for the west, though, German tourists are travelling there for hiking, angling and spending slow-moving holidays on the Wild Atlantic Way. Is Ryanair considering German or Dutch routes at Shannon?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
No, but there is a particular problem with the German market. It is the least recovered market post Covid. While Ireland has already fully recovered its pre-Covid traffic, Germany is only operating at 80% of its pre-Covid traffic. While emerging from Covid, Lufthansa closed down some of its own airlines, eliminating some of the competition. The German Government has doubled ATC fees in Germany, making them the most expensive in Europe, and the German airports have a legislative framework that does not allow them to discount for new route growth, so they have to apply the same published charges. Having the same published charges will not deliver growth and means we cannot afford new routes from Germany to the west that would be marginal at best. We fly from Frankfurt-Hahn to Shannon and I think we have one from Germany into Kerry as well during the peak summer months, so there is access, but it is high cost and loss making because of the high cost of infrastructure in Germany at the moment.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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When I look at the Ryanair route map, I see that its reach into Europe is extending. Some of its routes are up to four and a half or five hours long. Surely it is now time for Ryanair to start considering transatlantic routes. It had a plan once but scrapped it. Maybe such routes are not on the horizon, but some airports in upstate New York offer cheap landing fees that would be attractive. Ryanair could exploit the free clearance provided at Shannon and Dublin, making it viable for European travellers to go from Frankfurt-Hahn or Charleroi, touch down in Ireland and go on to the US. Is this possibility being considered?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
It is not for the same reason, in that there is no transatlantic growth out of Dublin while the traffic cap remains in place for the next two to four years. There are American airlines that want to expand in Dublin but cannot get slots in the same way we cannot get Christmas slots here.
What we do very well in Europe is quick-turnaround and short-haul flights. That does not work on transatlantic routes. Norwegian Air and others have tried to do long-haul, low-fare flights, but it does not work because the premium traffic that wants to go from Heathrow or Dublin to JFK will not opt to go to Rhode Island or somewhere else. That premium traffic pays for the entire aircraft. Regardless, it is a moot point while we still have the traffic cap at Dublin Airport and, regrettably, the Minister for Transport will not reply to our traffic growth proposals. If we cannot persuade him that we want to grow by 50% on short-haul routes to Europe, then there is not much point in sending in a plan to enter the transatlantic market either.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Of course, the Minister should reply. Ryanair needs a response. That submission cannot just be left hanging.
Respectfully, does part of Ryanair’s problem today not stem from it changing its business model? In Belgium, for example, Ryanair did not always fly into its capital of Brussels. When it used to fly into Charleroi, the airport was called Brussels South Charleroi Airport. If Ryanair is limited by what can fly in and out of Dublin Airport, surely some of Mr. O’Leary’s answer for this season, the shoulder season, winter and beyond should not be to wait four years for Eamon Ryan or someone to react, but to look at capacity in Shannon and Cork where things like car parking are cheaper and the experience is quicker. It is only two hours down the motorway. Ryanair was willing in the past to do the same. Charleroi was one example but there were dozens of others. The model of old served Ryanair well. Surely it could serve Ryanair well if it were applied to Ireland, particularly Shannon.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Surely the model of arriving in the west and day tripping to the east could be explored. It would be cheap.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
An interesting analysis that is often trotted out to us is that, if Ryanair cannot get to the Dublin, we should move all the passengers to Cork and Shannon. Some 65% of the traffic on our routes is inbound and the overwhelming majority of that traffic wants to go to Dublin. Some will go on to Shannon or Cork. There are limited markets where people want to access the west, and we are serving and growing those markets through Cork, Shannon and even Knock. We have now discovered a new market in Knock where we are taking people outbound on summer holidays to Faro and the Canary Islands, but only for approximately two months of the year. The market is inbound, and we have to keep growing that market so that we can sustain our new routes, more capacity and new aircraft here going outbound.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Surely there are not 200 people from Faro visiting Knock.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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They are people returning from holidays.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The return flight is usually people returning home from that trip. It is not people from the south of Portugal deciding they will have a lovely holiday in Mayo for the summer. Much as we would like them to, that is not always the case. The same 120 people who go on a sun holiday come back. While one person is flying out on a Friday, another is flying back. Even on a weekly basis, moving some of those routes down to the rest of the country should be viable.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We are already serving those routes that are viable. We are growing in Cork and Shannon, but as the Deputy rightly said, we cannot magic up a route. If we have nine aircraft in Faro this summer, there is no point in us trying to put on a route from Faro back to Shannon. All of that traffic is southwards.
This type of traffic growth takes time and significant investment. Each of the three aircraft in Shannon and Cork is a piece of kit worth $100 million. We have other markets around Europe. If the Minister tells us that Dublin is full and we cannot get additional slots, the alternative is not to move the aircraft to Shannon or Cork. Much as we would like to, those are thin and difficult markets. The alternative is to move the aircraft to Amsterdam, Manchester or Glasgow. Bristol is a city of 1 million people. The aircraft would be lost to Ireland. Some will go to Belfast. We have two aircraft based in Belfast. We believe we can resolve some of the pressure this Christmas by having returning emigrants come home via Belfast. It is not the worst option in the world.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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So, some people might not get home if this cap is not lifted.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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It is removable, but it probably would not be instantaneous. I thank Mr. O’Leary for his time. I may contribute again later.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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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?
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Okay. Were the aircraft in service last summer?
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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They are not lost; they are just forgone.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I am not sure what the difference between lost or foregone is. We would be delivering an extra million passengers at Dublin Airport over the next 12 months and had planned 16 new routes from Dublin. Those are not taking place. Those aircraft and those routes have gone to southern Italy and to Poland.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Mr. O'Leary mentioned the 514,000 seats he has written to the Minister about. Will Mr. O'Leary inform the committee his understanding of the outline of the regulatory arrangement the Minister presides over, when he is looking to expand with new slots and destinations? What is the process? In a scenario where there was no cap, how would Ryanair go about applying for those?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I will give the Deputy my understanding and then I am sure I will be corrected. Ryanair has had to apply on seasonal basis - each summer and winter - to the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, which is the regulator for slots. This was even before there was a passenger cap. We would apply, as we have done for this winter. We have the 6.4 million historical seats we operated last year. We also have the 570,000 extra seats. We operated those extra slots last year, so on a historical basis we should be getting those slots but the way the IAA is operating those slots now, it is saying no, it is sorry but because it allowed some additional slots this summer, it has to cut back the slots this winter. Ryanair has been denied those slots for those extra flights during the October mid-term break, Christmas and that kind of stuff. That is how the slot process is operating. Whether there was a passenger cap or not, Ryanair would still have to apply to the IAA.
Ryanair had an issue with the Minister about two weeks ago regarding the European soccer final in Dublin. We applied for approximately 16 extra flights because nobody knew who was in the final until about two weeks beforehand and they came from Italy and Germany. We applied for those extra slots in the normal way. We did not get the slots. To be fair, I wrote to the Minister for Transport and I want to thank him. The DAA would not issue the slots for the 16 extra flights. The Minister intervened and the slots were issued later on that day, so that was solved. However, that is not capable of being solved when looking for 270,000 extra seats this Christmas because we will be above the cap.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Is it because of the IAA regulations?
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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No, the Minister cannot instruct the IAA in that way. It is slightly more nuanced than that but I understand the point Mr. O'Leary is making.
I asked a question about Mr. O'Leary's understanding of how it works because he will understand - and I am in politics for 20 years as of yesterday - that writing to the Minister is a political move rather than a regulatory move. It sounds great at an Oireachtas committee, and I am not defending the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. He is not of my party albeit I am a supportive member of Government. My view would be that this is not Mr. O'Leary's first rodeo. He has been here before. Writing to the Minister to inform him of flights and 514,000 passenger numbers forgone is absolutely newsworthy and absolutely worth writing to the Minister about. However, I cannot help but feel if there is a regulatory process in place for Mr. O'Leary as an airline group chief executive officer adhere to, it is to go through IAA and the usual planning process, which I know he has done.
I simply wish to make the point there are two things going on before this committee. One, is an example of the strength of Mr. O'Leary's airline, which of course notable and welcome. The other is the politics. As a committee, our role is a bit of both as well. For the purposes of exploring the question underneath the caption on the screen behind me, which is about the impacts of the passenger cap, flights forgone are clearly central to that but there are other considerations.
For instance, the planning process we are now in - and to my knowledge there are at least two and possibly three under way - the statutory requirements of the independent aircraft noise regulator also has to be considered. In fact, it is the regulator that will most likely provide for the longest delay in this planning process, even if the planning decision by Fingal County Council is made in the next 18 months. It will then go to An Bord Pleanála and ultimately end up in the courts. I would be of that view, as I think Mr. O'Leary is.
The noise impact assessment will also take a very considerable period of time. There are two noise impact assessments going on at the moment as Mr. O'Leary probably knows. One is on the use of the north runway and the second is on the potential impact of removing the passenger cap. Will Mr. O'Leary comment on that or perhaps Mr. Kealy, who I think was indicating?
Mr. Eoin Kealy:
On the IAA side, the passenger cap is the original sin here. The IAA is part of the process around slot allocation but if the passenger cap was removed, the slot allocation process vis-à-vis the IAA would be changed utterly. It is not the IAA's role to set the passenger cap but that is an issue in what it is-----
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I think what the IAA is trying to do, and it can come here and tell us itself, my understanding is it is trying to assist or instruct the airport authority to avoid doing what it did in 2023. Everybody in this room will probably accept the cap was breached. The authority is under investigation for this but it breached the cap and has already said in writing it will breach the cap during 2024, or at least the Department has stated this. That is the position. It is what it is. It is a blunt instrument and is not appropriate anymore because the transport links certainly will be improved. I hope An Bord Pleanála will make a decision on the metro imminently. I am a realist as well. I recognise it is a decade away. The impact of this passenger cap on growth at Dublin Airport is critical but it is an immovable object until such time as it is gone.
I do not accept, I am afraid, Mr. O'Leary's points about there being a legislative fix because if we interfere in the planning process, it will immediately end up in the courts, it will be injuncted and it will be back to square one. It will be exactly like we are standing still at the moment, waiting for the planning authority and the noise regulator to make their decisions. I think Mr. O'Leary is long enough in the game to know that as well.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
May I respectfully disagree? I agree with the first part of the Deputy's point. We should not be where we are today but we are. If the DAA were competent, this planning should have taken place. I do not see any point in blaming the DAA or Fingal County Council. The planning process has to take its place. We have, however, two choices as a nation with an aviation policy that says we will deliver growth and be "a recognised global leader in aviation". We have a Minister for Transport. He has powers. He is also part of a majority Government. The Government can take action. We can have two decisions here, and yes, I accept that this is politics, but of course it is politics. We can sit on our hands for the next four years and export all this growth of traffic routes and jobs to every other European country, which will welcome it with open arms, or we can rely on the transport Minister and the Government to take action. There are two forms of action: one, the transport Minister can write to the IAA and tell it to suspend the cap while the planning process is ongoing. He has that power. The housing Minister-----
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I do not think he does. It would probably be best for us to get some legal people to sit where the witnesses are sitting and we can ask them that question. I invite Mr. O'Leary to write to me and I will put his questions to them directly, but I do not think what he says is the case.
I thank him and the other witnesses.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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It is my slot now and I have a few points.
Sometimes we in Ireland think Ryanair started here and is our airline, which it is, but, equally, we forget just how gigantic it is now. It flies more than half a million people, a day, every day. It is the biggest airline, as Mr. O'Leary said, in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ireland, obviously, and, I am sure, lots of other countries. Next week, we will have the DAA before the committee, the following week we will have the Minister and the week after that we will have the Minister again, so it is timely that Mr. O'Leary is here first, and we can certainly take on board some of his points with both the DAA and the Minister in the coming weeks, even though the Minister will not be here to discuss aviation. Once he is in the room, we will still be able to question him. I said to the DAA representatives the last time they were here that by the time it got the permission for 40 million passengers, based on what we are looking at, its figures would be at 40 million anyway if it did not have a cap. I asked if they should be looking at a mid-term strategy of 60 million passengers and looking to apply for 60 million rather than 40 million. I asked if the 40 million is a bit like Berlin airport or somewhere, where it was over capacity the day it opened. That is a question the witnesses might give their thoughts on.
I equally wonder about Ryanair's analysis of the DAA. It has been quite critical of it in the past, but could it be a lot more efficient? If Mr. O'Leary were in the position of Kenny Jacobs, what would he do? I know he probably would not take the job based on where he is now, but if he had that job, what would he do as the DAA chief executive? Equally, if he were the Minister for Transport, what would he like to do to enhance growth? I had never heard before that 65% of Ryanair's traffic is inbound. That is all tourism, basically. That is bringing money into the country and bringing tourists all over the island. They are staying in accommodation and spending money in pubs, restaurants, shops and so on. Obviously, we all have a mindset whereby we use Ryanair to go on our holidays, to go on business or whatever. Does he think that the growth just was not seen and that the DAA thought it would never hit this cap? Is that the reason it did nothing? Equally, as regards the DAA and the Dublin Airport campus long-term, should all the growth be in terminal 1 and terminal 2 or is there any scope for this third terminal concept, which has been talked about quite a lot? That might necessitate the tunnel that Mr. O'Leary says is unnecessary if that were ever to happen. What are his thoughts on a third terminal?
That will probably keep the witnesses going for a while.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Thank you for those questions, a Leas-Chathaoirligh.
First, there should not be a cap. We now have runway infrastructure that will probably take traffic capacity at Dublin up to 60 million passengers, so the DAA is again mismanaging the process. It is this fudgy, "We have a cap at 32 million; let us apply to lift it to 40 million". The minute it gets lifted to 40 million, we will already be at 40 million passengers.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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That was my point.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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So there is no cap at all, really.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
There should not be. The cap should be on facilities. The DAA got planning permission for two runways. They have two terminal buildings. They could improve the terminal buildings. That is where we believe the money should be spent. You are absolutely right, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. We are calling for a scrapping of the cap, not some planning process. The planning process was addressed when the second runway got permission to be built because that took capacity up to 60 million passengers. The DAA again mismanaged the process. I do not know why the DAA never applied. The DAA has been through numerous management changes in the past ten or 15 years. We will go back into the Department of Transport and the Department will rubber-stamp whatever it would be, and the situation has fundamentally changed. Planning is a much more difficult issue here. There has been at various stages of the past decade, though, talk about our passing legislation for strategically important assets. Dublin Airport is a strategically important asset. The LNG terminal in Shannon was strategically important. Should we have a small nuclear power plant on the island of Ireland? It would be strategically important, given that we have no energy independence at all. We do need, as a country, going forward, a process whereby, whatever the Government of the day decides will be a strategically important investment, planning is bypassed or at least fast-tracked.
What should the DAA be doing? The problem with the DAA is that it has planning permission at the moment for a tunnel of €250 million but it is about four years away from planning permission to lift the traffic cap. What it should be doing is fixing the car parks. When Kenny Jacobs is in here next week, or whenever he is in here, members should say to him, "You have been sitting there for a year-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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He will be in your chair this day week.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Members should say to him, "Last year, you were telling people, 'Our car parks are full. Please come by bus to the airport.' You own about 300 acres of land around the airport." We suggested this last year in the middle of the car parking crisis at Dublin Airport and it was kind of brushed off by him: "We are not running a country fair. We want our passengers to be parking on tarmac." Passengers would be quite happy to park in a field beside the airport during the months of June, July and August if that keeps car parking capacity rising and costs down. There is a kind of dismissive attitude of the DAA: "We are not running country fairs." Country fairs operate very successfully during the summer, when the ground is firm. If you have a real commitment to delivering for your passengers or creating car parking for your passengers, that is what you do. The DAA, however, has had 12 months from last summer to this summer to put some tarmac or 804 and dust on some of those fields. It already runs the bus services. There are already shuttles to and from the airport. It has sat on its hands doing nothing for the past year because it is secretly very happy to be able to increase the cost of car parking. It says, "There is nothing we can do here. It is all the competition authority's fault. It would not let us buy that other car park behind the hotel." Why did it not put some dust on its fields and create additional car parking that way?
As to what we would do at Dublin Airport, we would cancel the stupid tunnel that is going nowhere, open up some more car parks and keep the cost of car parking down, much the same way as we apply for extra flights at Christmas so we can keep the cost of flying at Christmas down. We would use the money that has been saved to expand terminals 1 and 2. Going through terminal 1, where Ryanair is the major airline, it is quite oppressive during the middle of the summer. There is not enough space there for people to sit down. I am sorry we are a victim of our own success. We are shovelling people through that building and it is quite unacceptable. There is a lack of toilet capacity and a lack of seating capacity and the retail offer is poor, yet the DAA sits on its hands waiting to spend €250 million on a tunnel to go to where the cargo planes are. As usual, we would say the DAA is pretty poor.
What should the Minister for Transport do? He should do one of two things: one, scrap the cap. I come back to Deputy Farrell's contribution. There would be more votes for this Government and certainly for the Minister for Transport - and I am not great fan of his - in being seen to take action to lift the cap and keep air fares down and traffic and jobs growth up at Dublin Airport than there would be in worrying about the appeal to An Bord Pleanála. Governments are there in the middle of a crisis to take action, and voters expect action to be taken. The new Taoiseach and the Government have got quite some kudos in recent weeks by being seen to take at least some action on tented villages on Mount Street and so on. I am not getting into the debate on immigration.
Government gets credit for taking action. It does not get credit for sitting around saying it is sorry but there is a planning issue and there is nothing it can do for the next four years. That is what I would do if I was Minister for Transport. If I was the Minister, I would have written back to Ryanair when we submitted a plan to him to grow traffic on and off this island by 50% over the next seven years. We handed him the plan at our meeting on 7 March. We are now close to the end of June and have heard nothing. Sadly, my experience of this Minister for Transport is that this tends to be his modus operandi. There is a lot of talk about solutions in 2050 but, when it comes to making decisions and taking action now, there is nothing.
To come back to the Leas-Chathaoirleach's last point as to whether there should be a terminal 3, we are largely indifferent. I have never been a great supporter of having a terminal 3 over on that side of the runway. There is more than sufficient space in terminal 1 and terminal 2. We have long campaigned and advocated for another proposal. The Leas-Chathaoirleach may know where we are located in terminal 1. We should be knocking down the hangars. To be fair to it, the DAA does have a plan to knock down those hangars on the north apron, that is, all of those hangars on your left-hand side as you drive out. That should be one long terminal building with lots more gates and lots more stands where we could park aircraft, which could then go straight out onto the north runway. We now have two runways. The terminal infrastructure could be expanded at very modest cost. What we do not need is to waste €250 million building a tunnel going nowhere to serve parcels when our primary objective should be to serve Irish people going abroad and visitors coming to this country.
To come back to another point, the Dublin metro will never be a solution for Dublin Airport. I have no issue with the Dublin metro if it is for the people of Swords, Fingal and Rush and if it is a DART going to and from the centre of town. However, the idea that the Dublin metro will do anything for Dublin Airport is a fantasy. Under the current plan for the Dublin metro, access in the centre of town has moved from St. Stephen's Green to Ranelagh. Nobody will be able to come to Ranelagh to get the Dublin metro to Dublin Airport because there will be nowhere to park in Ranelagh. The Dublin metro will not run at 4 a.m., which is what is needed to get passengers out to Dublin Airport for 5.30 a.m. to check in for 6.30 a.m. flights. It will do nothing for the airport. However, I employ a lot of people who live and work in Swords and I know that the people of Swords need better access to the centre of town. If the Dublin metro or a DART to Swords will solve that, I would be all in favour of it.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Does the cap at the moment just reduce the frequency and capacity of Ryanair's existing routes or are there are cities that Dublin Airport is missing out on? Are there cities Ryanair would like to fly to but does not because of the cap?
Mr. Jason McGuinness:
My job as chief commercial officer is to plan the schedule. I did have those three aircraft planned. There were 16 routes due to land in Dublin this year. That was factually happening. There are routes we could add to Poland and to locations across the Balkans and across Scandinavia. We are also growing rapidly in Morocco at the moment. What sometimes gets missed in the debate here is that, post Covid, there is very strong competition for Ryanair capacity across Europe. Let us take this week for example. Europe is still not fully recovered when compared to how things operated in June 2019. There are 3% to 5% fewer flights across Europe this week than there were in 2019. Representatives of between ten and 12 airports and regional tourist bodies visit me in Dublin every week. There are two things they all do. They bring me growth proposals and they reduce costs for traffic. While I do not like saying it, they generally laugh at me when I tell them what is happening in Dublin, that is, that we have two runways and that I cannot add any capacity. After we announced two weeks ago that we could not add capacity, by the time I got back to the office I had missed calls from two airports, one in Poland and one in Italy, that wanted that capacity. Two weeks ago, I was in Katowice announcing a third aircraft, an aircraft that was meant to go in Dublin. That is a city of close to 2.5 million people but we only have three aircraft based there. It is an airport that plans to double capacity over the next four years. That is what is happening in the real world across Europe. Airports, governments and regional governments are competing aggressively for capacity because they know we cannot grow in Ireland. I am sorry to say it but they are laughing at us.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Is Dublin Ryanair's second or third biggest base?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank all of the witnesses for giving up so much of their time today. We are not finished yet. I might come back in but I want to let other members who have not had a chance to come in to do so. I again thank them for what Ryanair is doing not just for inbound tourism, but for all of us who regularly use Ryanair to go other places. I call Senator Craughwell, who I am sure will talk about car parking among other things.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I thank Mr. O'Leary for his very comprehensive report to the committee. To put things in context, when I flew to England in 1968 because my old man would not let me go on the boat, it cost him five weeks' wages to fly me to London. I recall coming over and back on the ferry between 1968 and 1976. They were slow miserable crossings with people sick all around me. Ryanair has revolutionised travel out of Ireland. There is no getting away from that.
I am a little concerned when Mr. O'Leary says that, because of restrictions on flights, we are going to see fares of €500 each way. Is that a sort of penalty to force our citizens to turn on the political side of the country?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
No. We are getting our position our there first. If we are not able to add 270,000 additional seats to and from Dublin this year, the flights coming home at Christmas are going to cost dramatically more. We will hear that airlines are profiteering and putting up fares at Christmas but I want it to be known that we are not putting up the fares because it is Christmas. We are putting them up because we have an arcane and idiotic traffic cap at Dublin Airport that is preventing us from adding 270,000 extra seats.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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In reality, Ryanair is using an economic tool, supply and demand. Demand is greater than supply, ergo Ryanair can make a bit of a profit.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
That has been the case every Christmas. The question is whether we add 270,000 extra seats. I do not want these passengers to bleed to anywhere else. I do not want them going on boats. We add a very significant amount of seat capacity for a 20-day period over Christmas and the new year and, without that, the fares would be materially higher. We are facing a situation this Christmas where the fares are going to be materially higher because we are going to have 270,000 fewer seats. We will allocate those seats elsewhere. We will be adding extra in Madrid and Rome. The seats will go elsewhere. We will probably add some extra seats into Belfast but we only have two aircraft based there so there is a limit. We are not using an economic weapon. People need to understand the consequences. Deputy Farrell rightly said that these three or four aircraft are not really lost to Dublin because it never had them. That is true, although it would have if we did not have the cap this year. During the October school mid-term break and Christmas, people will really begin to see and feel the impact of this cap at Dublin Airport on pricing, particularly at peak periods and weekends when we cannot add extra capacity.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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My colleague said I would speak about car parks.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I said I thought you might.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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When the DAA bought the Q-Park site, I immediately sent an objection to the competition authority. That car park could be opened today. A number of people are willing to lease it pending the final decision on what happens. We have a final decision from the competition authority. Ironically, I was told last week that the DAA is about to lease the car park. I do not understand how it cannot be anti-competitive to lease it and run it if it was anti-competitive to buy it and run it. As I have said to the DAA and will say to its representatives again next week, its primary business is to run an airport. What the hell is it doing involving itself in car parking? That is one of my issues.
Irish Rail officials before the committee a little while ago and I asked about taking a spur line from Swords into the airport. They told us that could be done in two years. Planning and getting planning permission would take one year and it would take another to build it. We are talking about a metro. Mr. O'Leary said it will not happen in his lifetime. I do not believe it will happen in my grandchildren's lifetime. That is my view of it because every twist and turn will be hammered through planning and court hearings. Why not use the Swords spur? Why not have a circular spur going in and out from Swords to the airport? It makes perfect sense to me. You get a train from the city centre straight to Swords.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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There is no train station in Swords.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will have his say in a minute.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I just want that to be put on the record.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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Mr. O'Leary and I might disagree on the tunnel. I understand the function of the tunnel is to address a health and safety issue when moving packages from one side of the airport to the other.
I am not sure of that. It has been suggested to me that that is the reason. It sort of makes sense. It is not unusual to find tunnels in airports where things move over and back. I do not see how that would slow things down and impede the working of the airport especially given that we built the north runway and continued to operate.
Pilot shortage is the next thing I want to ask about. I understand that there is a shortage of pilots and a shortage of pilot training facilities, which would impede Ryanair's expansion aspirations. Is that true? Would Ryanair consider opening a pilot training school in Shannon or Knock in order to increase the capacity of pilot training? I am sure that there are plenty of other airlines looking for pilots. Given Ryanair's success in carrying passengers, it might not be a bad idea.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I will answer each point individually. I could not agree more with the Senator on his opposition to the proposed acquisition of the Q-Park facility. It would be fundamentally wrong to allow the DAA to monopolise all the car parking at Dublin Airport. The Q-Park facility was a competitor as a lower-cost car parking service, although it was more remote from Dublin Airport. I think the competition authority was absolutely correct to reject the DAA's proposal to buy it. This is being used as a distraction by the DAA. If the DAA says that car parking is full, we would ask why it is not opening up some of its 300 acres of land for parking. I refer to the fields that it owns immediately around the environs of the airport. It had the winter to put in some 804 material and dust. It could be done in less than three months. One does not need planning permission for a temporary car park, and these would be temporary car parks. Dublin is at peak supply. When a delegation from the DAA comes back in here in a week or two, I urge the committee not to be distracted. It should not let Kenny Jacobs mention Q-Park. Instead, it should ask him why the DAA is not opening up or developing some of the fields for car parking around Dublin Airport. He will cite all sorts of reasons, including health and safety. People just want the right to park their car in June, July and August without getting scalped. He is charging more for car parking than we charge in air fares to get people to London.
I have no issue with the creation of a spur train line. Heathrow Airport is serviced by the Heathrow Express and the underground. Less than 15% of passengers who go to and from Heathrow Airport use the train. Most passengers travel by bus or drive. The problem with all these train solutions at airports is that people taking flights in the early morning or late evening generally travel from their home to the airport. It is not convenient for them to drive to Connolly Station, Heuston Station, Busáras, St. Stephen's Green or wherever. People are not going to drive into the centre of town at 4.30 a.m. or 5 a.m. to get public transport to get to the airport and do the same on the way back. We all know that if we are going to the airport for an early-morning or late-evening flight, it is our natural instinct to drive there and park in whatever car park is available. That is what people will do because it is most convenient for them. Approximately 90% of people going to and from the airport are coming from their homes. The inbound passengers, who are the visitors, are very well served. We are incredibly fortunate that whoever designed Dublin Airport in 1939 chose the location at Collinstown because it is only 9 km from the city centre. It is very well served by buses. The capacity of the bus services is massively underestimated. In 2017, when the planning restriction was put in place, bus services accounted for 5% of Dublin Airport's traffic. Today, buses deliver between 25% and 30% of its traffic, mainly huge volumes of inbound traffic. It is not buses going to the centre. There are buses from Dublin Airport to Mullingar, Kinnegad and Knock Airport. Buses are the way we solve this problem without wasting billions of euro on a metro solution. Again, I have no issue with a metro or a train if it is just for commuters going to and from Whitehall, Drumcondra, Swords or Rush, where huge numbers of my employees live. That is fine but it does not solve Dublin Airport. Dublin Airport gets solved by having more car parking capacity to keep the cost of car parking reasonable, and more buses. The airport is very well served by buses.
On health and safety, when Kenny Jacobs starts talking to the committee in two weeks' time about the health and safety of parcels - he will say there is a need to spend €250 million so that the parcels will be healthier and safer going around Dublin Airport - members should ask him why the cargo airlines are not paying €250 million. What they are doing is gaming the regulatory system, as they have always done, and saying we need to spend €250 million building a four-lane tunnel to get to the other side of a taxiway that one can drive across. None of the airlines support this. All of the airlines, including Aer Lingus, Ryanair and everybody else, are completely opposed to the proposal. The problem is that Kenny Jacobs wants to spend €250 million because the regulator will allow him to increase passenger charges at Dublin Airport to pay for a tunnel to ensure that the parcels are healthier and safer. Frankly, and people can criticise me for saying so, but I do not care much about the parcels. The parcels are not time sensitive or subject to anything. One or two might fall off the back of a truck but no one is going to get injured. The parcels can either be driven across the taxiway or go around the airport, which is what they do at the moment and none of this is time sensitive.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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In fairness, maybe Mr. Jacobs wants to increase the volume of aircraft using the runway so he cannot have trucks driving over and back across it.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
It is not a runway. It is a taxiway. It is a closed runway. I will refer the Senator to the picture. The old runway has now been closed and is now just a taxiway. They do this in many European airports. Cologne-Bonn Airport, which is one of Germany's bigger airports, put down railway gates and traffic lights on both sides. If an aircraft is using the taxiway and the traffic cannot drive across, after the aircraft goes through the railway gates come down and off you go. Such a project would cost less than €1 million and save passengers, consumers and visitors from paying the €250 million that Kenny Jacobs wants to inflate the airport charges by.
Last, I am happy to say that there is no pilot shortage. Every three or four years the pilot unions put out a general report that there is a worldwide shortage of pilots. There has never been a shortage of people who earn what pilots earn, to which they are entitled as it is a very skilled profession. We train about 1,000 cadets every year. At present, we are spending €50 million on the construction of a pilot training centre in Madrid, and another one in Kraków in Poland to take our annual capacity for pilots. We will produce 1,500 cadets every year. We need between 700 and 800 cadets for our own resources so we are training more trainee pilots than we need. We already have a large pilot training school in Swords, County Dublin. We have spent about €25 million on the school, which is close to Dublin Airport. The school has six state-of-the-art simulators and produces 250 or 300 pilot cadets every year. Pilots are members of a very skilled profession but they are very well paid and have very good working conditions. By law, a pilot cannot fly more than 900 hours a year, which is an average of 18 hours a week over a 50-week or 48-week year. I do not begrudge what pilots earn. It is a particularly easy job on a sunny day when there are no clouds but they earn every cent of their corn when landing in cross-winds or thunderstorms, as we have had all over Europe, or in low-visibility conditions. I am pleased to say that there is no pilot shortage in Ryanair. We are essentially going to be the only big 737 operator in Europe and we are training more pilots than we will need for ourselves.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I thank our guests for coming in here today. I thank Mr. O'Leary for his presentation, which included details of flights being forgone - I do not want to open up the debate he had with Deputy Farrell - and tried to convey the impact of the cap. What has been frustrating for me and others is that an awful lot of the discussion about this by the DAA is quite vague. It is done on the airwaves and there are no details, not even a PowerPoint presentation like we have had today which I appreciate.
I would like to start by discussing the MetroLink project. I believe that the project is a must. It is not just a piece of supporting infrastructure for Dublin Airport. If the MetroLink project is built, as planned, it will facilitate a 24-7 service that will assist the workers of Ryanair and the airport. The project is designed for the growth of the town of Swords, which currently has a population of 50,000 people, to a population of 100,000 people. The town would have a park-and-ride facility. The project would also serve DCU and the city centre. The project is not the answer to Dublin Airport's problems but it is a long-term solution to some of the transport infrastructure constraints that could impact Dublin Airport.
The cap is based, rightly or wrongly, not on local traffic concerns but on national road plans. It is not about getting the turn at Kealy's pub or at the roundabout beyond it. It is a national road plan. That needs to be said. While Mr. O'Leary put across his case quite well in the PowerPoint presentation, he gives the impression that Fingal County Council is maybe quite insular, small and slow in dealing with things whereas it has had to deal with an approximately 7,500 page planning application with more than 700 drawings. This was dropped on it one and a half weeks before Christmas by the DAA. Within eight weeks the council had sent a comprehensive reply to the DAA and is waiting to hear back. Everyone in this space has common cause with how frustrating Dublin Airport has been managed by the management of the DAA, including residents around north County Dublin. I do not think it is fair to call them nimbys. Mr. O'Leary has been frustrated for many years by the management of the DAA. We have been frustrated by the management of the DAA. There is no reason the local residents do not have understandable cause to be frustrated by the management of the DAA with flight paths being one of the reasons. That is not what we are here to talk about. However, when you have been brought through a process for east-west take-offs for the new runway, and for insulation schemes, and the first day that runway opens up the flights diverge 30 degrees to the north and cross over new estates and towns that were never told they would be crossed, you can understand the frustration. The DAA comes in here and tells us it was news and a surprise. They woke up and looked out their windows and saw the flights go. It is an affront to us, the users of the airport and to the residents. I want that on the record.
I turn to quieter aircraft. How do you calculate a traditional aircraft with modern aircraft? Is it decibel level, like an 80 dB average for aircraft noise? Is this new aircraft 40 dB, or half the noise? How is that calculated?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
There is a noise profile. It is above my technical competence. I can forward details. There is a noise profile for our older aircraft - the older 737s. It is done by some kind of decibel. If the Deputy has flown on our older aircraft and one of the current ones, the Gamechangers, they are materially quieter. Even at the window you will notice how much quieter they are. There is a noise envelope. Our existing aircraft are approximately 50% less noisy by decibel level compared to our older aircraft. I do not know how that decibel level is measured. The new 737 MAX 10 we hope to get in 2027 will reduce that again by another 30%. There is an 80% reduction in noise between our older aircraft and the newer aircraft we will get in 2027. I will come back on the other point. I have no issue with Fingal County Council. It has to do what it has to do. My issue is with the reason the Minister for Transport is not taking some alternative action.
We have gone around and measured on a decibel level. There are three critical areas. One thing is not well understood. When we only had one runway, all of the traffic was taking off or landing over St. Margaret's. There was one flight path. We now have two runways so there are two flightpaths. I appreciate that brings other houses in Ashbourne and Ballyboughal under a noise path. However, you have reduced the number of take-offs over St. Margaret's by 50% simply by using two runways. We have gone around and put up noise measuring equipment at St. Margaret's, Ballyboughal and Ashbourne. Without any aircraft overhead the average noise levels are 48 dB in St. Margarets, 45 dB in Ballyboughal and 39 dB in Ashbourne. When an aircraft is overhead, St. Margaret's goes from 48 dB to 53 dB, Ballyboughal goes from 45 dB to 53 dB and Ashbourne goes from 39 dB to 48 dB. That video is on the Ryanair website. I will put that in some context. If you are on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin, that is 70 dB. If you are on Sydney Parade Avenue when a DART passes by, that is 72 dB. Nobody wants to belittle that there is a noise issue at Dublin Airport, but the noise is dramatically reducing. RTÉ is much beloved of going out to interview some teary-eyed mother whose children cannot sleep late at night, but it never puts up noise measuring equipment that shows it is about 48 dB and perfectly quiet out there.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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We have difficulty trying to access the noise measuring data from ANCA, where it is and so on.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I will watch that video and I might come back to see if more details can be ascertained from it. That would be interesting. Mr. O'Leary mentioned workers living close by. The company recently purchased 25 homes in Fosterstown Place in Swords. Are they fully accommodated now?
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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Is this something the company is looking to do continually?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
No. The challenge we face is that our new cabin crew are generally earning between €25,000 and €35,000, so would be the lowest paid people in our operation. Within a year if they get promoted to being supervisors, they are up to between €40,000 and €50,000. Where we struggle in recent years is that we cannot find accommodation. We have accommodation for new joining cabin crew in Citywest, Tallaght and Wicklow, and no public transport to get to the airport either early in the morning or late in the evening. We felt the only way we would solve this problem was with accommodation in and around Swords where the majority of our people live, but we cannot guarantee availability of accommodation. As the Deputy knows, Swords is the fastest growing town in Europe. There is enormous pressure on accommodation, and we cannot find readily available rental accommodation around the airport. We felt this was the only way to fix it. We have now bought approximately 40 houses in and around Swords and around the Airside retail park. There was a new development going into Fosterstown and we bought 25 units there. We now have approximately 150 bedrooms, which is how we measure it. We expect to bring in approximately 150 new cabin crew every summer. We expect that will provide them with reasonably priced accommodation, but much more important is access to it one bus stop away from Dublin Airport. They will only have access to it for the first 12 months. We expect them to move out within the first 12 months. They generally form friendships and move out, and they will rent somewhere else themselves by year two or three.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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There is understandable frustration among young people, or people who build up their deposit. However, there is also an understanding within the town because they are all airport people. They know the pressures on accommodation there. There was a mixed response. There was understandable anger, but also an understanding that these workers who help the local communities of Swords and Fingal to thrive need a place to stay. That needs to be understood, because there was a pretty black and white, back and forth over it on the media.
I return to the planning application. The 7,000 page, 700 drawing application is the largest planning application ever received by Fingal County Council. That includes the raising of the passenger cap. Would Mr. O'Leary have put that planning application in, or would he have put an individual application in to remove the cap or whatever? Why does he believe the DAA made the decision to put in a huge application, with ten infrastructure projects and a raising of the passenger cap?
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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It will say it is losing routes as well. It comes here and says it cannot get in the big planes from Ethiopia or New York and all the rest.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
The DAA could not care less. It suits it fine to increase fees by 45% for the next four years. When you ask the DAA why it did not open some more car parks last winter on the land it owns around Dublin Airport, as it knew car parks would be full this summer, you are told that it was because it wanted to buy Q-Park. The DAA is a master at under-delivering capacity and increasing fees. That is what it does. It is unconscionable that the DAA did not go in with a single planning application to raise this cap, but instead chucked the kitchen sink into it. We listened today to how it has put in a planning application for aircraft spotters.
Is that now what is needed? Of course, it will be put into the regulatory asset base. That will go into the IAA and then we will have to increase charges again, so it can build some shiny new viewing platform for plane spotters.
The DAA continuously mismanages this airport. It should have submitted a single application, if only in terms of needing a temporary lift in this regard. There is a legislative basis for this there. It could have asked for a temporary raise in this cap to 36 million passengers for the next two years to allow the company to grow the number of jobs, etc. It would still have had to have gone through the planning process, but at least it would have been a much simpler plan. Instead, this 8,000- to 10,000-page document was put in. It has extensions to terminals and all this paraphernalia to make it more complicated. The DAA knows it is going to take four years. During this time, though, the DAA will have approval from its regulator to increase passenger fees by 46%.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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The planning application, including the viewing platform referred to by Mr. O'Leary, does not include any on-the-ground noise mitigation measures, which are relatively low cost. These measures would help to improve relationships with the community in terms of the aircraft noise, which is a big part of this overall conversation. It colours everything we talk about and we cannot ignore it. I have gone well over my time. I am sorry for taking time from my colleagues who want to come back in.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Do not worry about that. I will let the Deputy back in again. I should have let Deputy Farrell in the first time, but I will let him in first on this second round of questions if he does want to come back in.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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The only thing I really wish to say is that this has been a very informative conversation but the number of uninformed statements being made is extraordinary. I refer to members and witnesses in respect of topics like public transport, accessibility in Swords, the planning application, the regulatory systems being operated in the background-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I hope I was not one of them but perhaps I was.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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-----what is in the planning application that is before the county council and what is not, what is before ANCA, that body's decision and what is before the courts. I find it extraordinary. I have only been appointed to this committee for a few weeks, but I do find it extraordinary that we are having this conversation in this context. I am baffled that we are here talking about stuff we are clearly not informed about. I think it is the role of the committee and that of Mr. O'Leary to know and to put facts before this committee.
There are loads of opinions, and I am sure that some of them have a foundation, but I am really struggling with this discussion from the perspective of having a disagreement in respect of what was referred to as being forgone and lost. Sure, I understand the point, but it is not there, so you cannot lose it. It is something the airport, the Irish people and Mr. O'Leary's airline are not able to realise. Therefore, it is not possible to realise the profit associated with it and the public is not able to realise the use of the slots. There must, however, always be regulatory decisions. I repeat what I said earlier in relation to the capacity of the Minister or the Government to intervene and, like that, change the decision of An Bord Pleanála, the highest planning authority in the country. The Minister cannot do it. Is this unfortunate? Sure. Is there something we can do from a legislative perspective? Yes, there is. Would it be immediately challenged, however? Yes, it would. I can think of four different people straight away who are resourced and motivated to appeal such legislation. It would probably even go all the way to Europe, just to, and please excuse the expression, wind us all up. I think Mr. O'Leary knows this too.
What we should really be talking about are the immediate things we can do and the solutions we can implement now. Returning to the point made by Senator Craughwell concerning Q-Park, the car-parking scenario and the use of the fields, that is, land owned by the DAA, it is not possible to tarmac it and use it as a car park without planning permission. It is just not possible to do so. Not only can it not be done by a private citizen, but it absolutely cannot be done by a semi-State commercial body. Again, therefore, lots of stuff is being thrown out there and I find it very difficult to sit here and not say something about it. I sat quietly while everyone else made their contributions but I do think it would be helpful if this committee based itself in fact and tried to stay based in fact throughout the whole process. It is not a question and I do not require a response.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I think it deserves a response. First, you do not need planning permission for a temporary car park. It is possible to park on the grass and put 804 on it. As long as it is a temporary car park, you do not need planning permission. No agriculture show gets planning permission and there are lots of them around the country.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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We are talking about two different things.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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We really are.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
There are not two different things. If the Deputy is going to sit there and try to say there is nothing we can do here and the planning process must take its four-year course, that is not what we elect our Governments to do. I would argue this the other way around in favour of this endeavour. There are solutions. Yes, some may be politically inconvenient. Yes, some may run some risk of a court challenge. I would, though, have our Government lift the cap for the next three or four years and take our chances with a court challenge, rather than sit there for four years exporting these routes, jobs and traffic to other European airports that are laughing at us when we are saying there is nothing we can do here because this is the planning process.
Governments have two choices. They can sit there and do nothing or they can act. I believe the Government that acts will be rewarded at the polls. We can lift the cap. Planning permission is not needed for a temporary car park. We only need those additional car park spaces. The DAA has said the car parks are full for weekends in July and August. It owns 300 acres of land there. It is reasonably straightforward-----
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Again, Leas-Chathaoirleach, I will just point out, with respect, that Mr. O'Leary has talked about these things on three separate occasions. I did not address them once. I expressed my opinion. It was not a question. It is on the record where Mr. O'Leary stands and where I stand.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Okay. Would Mr. Kealy like to contribute?
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I do not think it is.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Yes, but this is not strategic infrastructure.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I am not doubting it, but I am saying that it is not strategic infrastructure, so this cannot be done.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Farrell is saying that at the moment this proposed infrastructure does not meet the criteria and Mr. Kealy is saying that it does or it should.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I agree it should, but it does not.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Currently, it does not. Okay.
Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Yes.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Now, if Deputy Farrell is finished, I call Deputy Crowe.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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To come in on a few points from earlier, we mentioned the national aviation policy that is coming up for review. It is grossly outdated. Beyond the passenger cap, because I think we have that issue well covered, what would be Mr. O'Leary's key requests? I am sure he will be making a submission to the Minister around the time of the review and I am just wondering, getting ahead of that happening, what Mr. O'Leary's key requests will be of the Minister at that stage.
Additionally, and this is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek question, but I know that Mr. O'Leary gives tongue-in-cheek answers as well, he has said that Dublin Airport is-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Those are outrageous slurs. I am sure I have to give out to the Deputy about that.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Mr. O'Leary has criticised the management of Dublin Airport. I am just wondering where in Ireland he might say an airport is being well managed. That is my query on that aspect.
Just overall, the Ryanair model is working well. It is going extremely well and the airline is getting a lot of people around. It is not for us to advise Mr. O'Leary on Ryanair's commercial model, but I think the public would love to see the airline move into the trans-Atlantic space. I ask Mr. O'Leary to elaborate on why it is tricky to do this in respect of either side of the Atlantic because if there was even a whisper of this possibility happening, it would be trending and spoken about in every house in Ireland. Irish people have a hankering to get across the Atlantic but it is damn expensive. I am just wondering, therefore, if there is any space in which Ryanair can do this. Is there anything from a regulatory point of view that needs to happen for this development to occur?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Okay. On aviation policy, I would not change a word of Ireland's aviation policy. I think Ireland's aviation policy is a terrific document. It is just that the Minister for Transport does not pay any attention to it. If we look at the policy, and it is extensive, it is centred around three main aims, including enhancing "Ireland’s connectivity by ensuring safe, secure and competitive access responsive to the needs of business, tourism and consumers". We absolutely sign up to that aim, but you cannot have a passenger cap at your main airport and then say that it is our policy. The second aim is to "foster the growth of aviation enterprise in Ireland to support job creation and position Ireland as a recognised global leader in aviation". How can we be a recognised leader in global aviation if we are sitting there saying, "The airport is full and there is nothing we can do here for four years because that is the way the planning process works"? The third aim is to "maximise the contribution of the aviation sector to Ireland’s economic growth and development". We made a written submission to the Minister for Transport on 7 March, two and a half months ago, to increase traffic to this island by 50% over the next six years, thereby maximising "the contribution of the aviation sector to Ireland’s economic growth and development", and we cannot even get a reply. I mean do we build-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Did Ryanair meet him in March as well?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
It did not take four years but he very kindly came out to Airside, which I know is a long way from Ranelagh. He came to the northside and we welcomed him to Fingal. We had a useful meeting and we gave him the most ambitious growth proposal that I would say any Irish company has submitted to the Government in the last 25 or 30 years. For two and a half months, there has been nothing. He has other responsibilities. He has transport, communications and the environment. There is a whole transport wing in that Department.
Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Sorry to interject. Would Ryanair not then go to the Minister of State, Deputy Jack Chambers, because it is largely within his remit to deal with this?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
The Minister for Transport is Deputy Eamon Ryan and so much as we value the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, who is the aviation minister, this is a transport issue. I met the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, too, but I would have thought the advantage of having a Minister for Transport who is one of the triumvirate of party leaders who meet weekly to decide Government policy and so on is that we have a seat at a table where all these big decisions are being made, but there is nothing. We cannot get anything out of him.
We have an excellent aviation policy. Please implement and act on it. Which airports do this well? The best ones at the moment are Bergamo in Italy and Charleroi. Bergamo continues to expand every year. It expands the terminal. I do not know how Italy manages planning. We started flying to Bergamo 22 years ago this year. This year, Bergamo's traffic will be-----
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
-----16 million passengers. It is almost half the size of Dublin Airport. It is not government-owned but owned by the local city. There are many European airports, such as the eastern European airports, which are much more aggressive about growth, including in Poland and the Baltic states. We were the largest airline in Ukraine before the war. They do not struggle with the kind of planning challenges that we challenge with. We accept that we struggle with planning challenges but I do not accept that the Government cannot do anything about this for the next four years. When the air fares home at Christmas are €1,000 return, I want to point to the Minister for Transport and say that we told him this would happen. It can still be avoided if somebody directs the IAA to waive the cap or to allow us to add these extra flights at Christmas.
This is technical. Transatlantic is a different business to short-haul flying. In short-haul, whether in North America or Europe, nobody will pay for premium traffic anymore. There is no business class anymore. Nobody wants to show up in a business lounge at 7 a.m., as my father would have done 30 years ago, quaffing champagne before he went on the red-eye flight or pie-eyed flight to London, but you paid about £209 return because you were not staying on Saturday night. Now people want to show up at the airport. They do not want to check in a bag. They want to go straight through security, get on the plane, get there, get their job done and get home.
On long-haul, you still have to show up three hours beforehand. Some 20% of the passenger base will pay a gargantuan air fare. I was on a results roadshow about three weeks ago. I had to go to New York and North America for a week, visiting shareholders. I was going to do financial public relations in London. The return fare from London to New York, coming back to Dublin from Chicago with Aer Lingus, was £13,500 in business class. To be fair to Aer Lingus, if I had gone on the Sunday afternoon from Dublin to New York and come back on exactly the same flight from Chicago to Dublin early on Friday morning, it would have been about €4,500 or €5,000. Because we are a low fares airline, I went out on the Sunday with Aer Lingus and came back the following day. I will fly economy everywhere around Europe. I will not fly economy across the Atlantic. If I am coming back, I need to sleep. I want to get a shower when I arrive here and go and do a day's work. I will pay whatever that is.
With 20% of business on long-haul completely price insensitive because it is largely paid by passengers' employers, that high-yield traffic pays for all the rest of the aircraft. The economy stuff is the cream on top for those airlines. Nobody has yet demonstrated that rich people are willing to move from Dublin to depart from Knock and land in Rhode Island. They will not do it because, historically, they have always gone from Dublin to JFK International Airport, Heathrow to JFK or Frankfurt to JFK, and that is the way that long-haul works. It is just a different business model.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I will make a couple of points. On the fact that 65% of Ryanair traffic is inbound, Mr. O'Leary is talking about increasing Ryanair aircraft at the Dublin base from 33 to 40. Ryanair's projections are showing more growth at the other five airports than in Dublin. It showed the Minister for Transport planned growth of 50%, from 20 million to 30 million passengers. Of these, 4.3 million more passengers will fly out of Dublin Airport and 5.7 million more passengers will fly out of the other airports. As such, Ryanair is doing what many of our non-Dublin members would like in focusing that way. Has anyone done an economic analysis of what Ireland is losing from these seven aircraft, including the staff, the jobs that Ryanair creates directly, the tourism, the flights that we are all missing out on and the tourists who are not coming to Ireland to spend their money in pubs and restaurants or to visit the cliffs of Moher. Has anyone looked at that?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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They are. I am an accountant by background and I would like to see figures. I know it will be a big figure but I would like to realise how big it is.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We know one statistic that is accurate. There are about 750 direct jobs for every 1 million passengers, so there is another 7,500 jobs. Ireland is at full employment at the moment so what was compelling with regard to job creation 20 years ago when everybody was emigrating and we had 20% unemployment may not be compelling now, but there are 7,500 additional jobs straight away.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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All that pure cash coming into the country is foreign money coming to be spent here.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
With due respect to the Fingal Deputies, there is an issue with noise in Dublin Airport. I fully agree with Deputy Smith that DAA has not handled the local residents well over many years, but what is missed sometimes when there is a debate on the airwaves about the noise and residents around Dublin Airport is the restaurants, hotels and all the tourism jobs that are created and sustained by bringing in additional visitors. We cannot stop growing. Our Minister for Transport loves to say we need a climate solution. In the immediate term, we need jobs. New hotels are being opened and new leisure facilities are being developed. We need to keep growing. We are an island on the periphery of Europe. Europe loves taxing air travel. The people who suffer most from that are those who take short-haul flights to the peripheral countries of Europe, including Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus. Thankfully, the Italians have now said they will veto any more environmental taxes. I have yet to hear the Irish Government say it will veto any more environmental taxes on aviation. It is fine for the Dutch, Belgians and Germans, who live at the centre of Europe and have alternatives, including motorways and trains, but if you live in Ireland, you do not have those alternatives for access.
One of our proudest associations in Ryanair is that we sponsor the European Erasmus programme. We give discounted flights to about 70,000 students. One of the great successes of Europe has been the educational programme for Erasmus students. One of the tragedies of Brexit, apart from the economic catastrophe it has been in the UK, is that English students are now cut off from Erasmus and vice versa. The way forward in Europe is low-fare air travel, encouraging our young people to travel all over Europe for leisure and study, and to increasingly integrate and break down barriers between the nations of Europe.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I spoke at a committee in Brussels about the hard to decarbonise aviation and maritime sectors. It was exactly what Mr. O'Leary is saying. We had people from the centre of Europe all saying that we should ban short-haul flights, including people from France, Germany, Belgium and so on, and then all of a sudden we start speaking of Cyprus, Malta, northern Sweden, the Canary Islands and Ireland. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach. If you want to go from Brussels to Amsterdam, why would you fly? That is fine. Ryanair probably does not have and probably would not want that route, but we are an island off an island that does not even want to be part of the EU.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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We live in hope but the metro might arrive before that.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
The bizarre issue about the EU is that it is only taxing EU passengers. Aviation accounts for about 2.4% of Europe's carbon dioxide emissions. Some 53% of that 2.4% is created by long-haul flights and we exempt all the long-haul flights.
The people creating most of the CO2 emissions in aviation in Europe - the Americans, Russians, Chinese and everybody else coming to Europe - are completely exempt. Yet, we tax the hell out of our citizens in Europe on their short-haul flights.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Internal EU flights, is that right? Flights to Albania are not affected and now flights to the UK are not affected.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Even more bizarre, our flights to the Canary Islands for winter sun pay the full ETS, which averages out at about €5 per Ryanair passenger. Our winter sun flights to Morocco, right beside the Canary Islands, are exempt because it is outside the EU. We are making flights to Morocco cheaper and penalising winter sun flights to the Canary Islands because the system was designed by a Dutch-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Even though it is a duty-free zone and is semi out of the EU when it suits.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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-----but everyone should do it.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I will do my tongue-in-cheek bit now. Mr. O'Leary might be willing to invite us as committee members to see Ryanair's headquarters, as the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, did. I think a lot of members might be interested in visiting.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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If Mr. O'Leary invites us, we can come - put it that way.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate that.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I thought the Leas-Chathaoirleach was going to ask if he was going to bring us to Morocco.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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We can go to Morocco on a separate visit.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I am sure we will pay our fair share. I do not want to let Mr. O'Leary go before asking about ATC. I do not know how we have managed to get this far without mentioning ATC at all. Where are we going with ATC in Europe? It has been very challenging for a lot of flights. We hope to get Eurocontrol into the committee some time after the summer. Is it getting better or worse? Is there a way forward?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
There are a couple of different issues. Eurocontrol is just a collection agency. All it does is collect all the ATC fees and distribute them. The situation is getting marginally better this summer only because the French have not engaged, thus far, in 53 days of air traffic control strikes. It had 53 days of ATC strikes between February and June last year. They were protesting President Macron's pension reforms, from which they were exempt. Secondary striking in France is a national pastime. The French ATC is the most strike-prone and they are allowed to have secondary striking. Even when it is a subject that does not affect them, they can go on strike. The problem on which we continue to campaign is trying to persuade Europe. In fact, I have campaigned so aggressively that I have taken a couple of pies in the face outside Berlaymont. When there is a strike, the French use minimum service legislation to protect their domestic local flights. It cancels all the overflights. Most other EU countries, notably Spain, Italy and Greece, protect 100% of overflights and cancel local fights but the French take the opposite view, for obvious reasons. The problem is the geographic centrality of France. We do not need French ATC to allow us to overfly France but they close the sky and there is no capacity to fly around so we have to cancel. Typically, on a French ATC strike day, we have to cancel 600 flights.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Most of them are not landing in France at all.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
None are landing in France. It is flights from Ireland to Italy, the UK to Spain, Germany to Portugal and vice versa, because of the centrality of France. I suggest that Ursula von der Leyen should take the simple initiative of saying that we are not affecting anybody's right to strike but if French air traffic controllers want to go on strike, they can go on strike, but we will protect all overflights. French domestic flights and French airports will be affected. Nobody's right to strike will be impacted in any way but overflights will be protected. That is a perfectly fair and reasonable compromise. The legislation already exists and minimum service legislation already exists.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Ryanair is affected by flights that would be landing in Beauvais or wherever.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We would take the hit. If we had to cancel all our flights to Beauvais because French ATC were having a strike, we would take that hit but at least the flights would go. It is very hard to explain to people in Dublin going to Italy or people in Germany going to Portugal why their flights are cancelled because there is a strike in France. It does not happen in any other sector. The French can close the périphérique around Paris but they do not shut all the motorways. Trains from Brussels to Spain do not get cancelled when there is a French train strike but the skies are closed. It is a great criticism I have of the European Union. If it fixed the overflights, that would eliminate about 90% of flight cancellations in Europe every year and eliminate about 80% of flight delays without in any way compromising or affecting their right to go on strike. Everybody should have the right to go on strike but if you are going to go on strike, Europe should protect the Single Market for flights and, at least, protect overflights.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Is there any sign, from Mr. O'Leary's perspective, that it is willing to touch this?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
None, but there will be a new parliament and new Commission. I am ever optimistic that a new parliament and new Commission might be more willing. Everybody we meet in Brussels - every Commissioner, every parliamentarian - says we must fix that but it is France, and you know what the French are like. If you go back to when air travel was first deregulated, as Senator Craughwell said - I am not quite as old as Senator Craughwell but in my day, when we went on rugby tours-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Possibly the oldest person in the room.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
My 15-year-old went on his rugby tour last year. He had a Ryanair flight to Barcelona over the Easter weekend. Things have dramatically changed. Flights to Barcelona are a damn sight cheaper than the ferry to Liverpool was in our day. It is one of the great successes of the European Union. Low-fare air travel has been one of the great successes. A reason the Irish economy transformed in the past 20 or 30 years is low-cost air access. That is just not Ryanair - Aer Lingus, to be fair, has responded very well. We have a world-leading aviation industry here, but we just cannot keep a world-leading aviation industry if we have this absurd traffic cap at our main airport, where we just opened a second runway that allows us to grow to 60 million passengers a year.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Two members of the committee have just been elected to the European Parliament, so there will be two people to talk to.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I am long enough around that I did a project on Ryanair when I was in school in 1988, when it was a very small little airline. It is amazing to see what it has transformed into. There was also the deregulation of airlines. In the past, airlines could only fly from their home country to other countries and could never open a base in any other country. Aer Lingus could operate from Ireland, British Airways could operate from the UK and Olympic could operate from Greece. That is probably what helped to make Ryanair.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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We just need to implement it.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. O'Leary. I will let Deputy O'Connor in because he has not been in. I will then allow Senator Craughwell back in.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Ryanair and Mr. O'Leary. There is a geographical argument around why lifting the cap on Dublin Airport would be damaging for Cork and Shannon airports. It is an argument with which I completely disagree. I am on the same page as Mr. O'Leary. Someone with Mr. O'Leary's success and stature in business should explain to people in areas like Cork and Shannon why lifting the passenger cap in Dublin Airport is actually going to be a good thing for the airports in Cork and Shannon and by increasing growth in Dublin, there would be more aircraft based on the island and in the country. Will Mr. O'Leary give some indication to the public in Cork, whom I represent, and those in Shannon or near other regional airports why doing this is necessary in Dublin for the whole island to benefit? There is a lazy argument based on geography that doing this is damaging when, in fact, it is probably not. Will Mr. O'Leary give an explanation around that?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We slightly covered this in some of the previous answers but I am happy to set it out again.
We submitted a growth plan to the transport Minister on 7 March. It would commit us to growing our traffic on the island of Ireland from 20 million to 30 million passengers over the next six years, out to 2030. We have the aircraft ordered that would be able to facilitate that. As part of that, Dublin would grow from 16 million to about 20 million passengers, representing about 20% growth. Cork would grow from about 2 million passengers to 4.5 million, which is more than 100% growth. Shannon would grow from 1.3 million to 3 million, which is also more than 100% growth. The number of aircraft based in Cork would grow from three to seven while the number in Shannon would grow from three to six. The difficulty is that none of that growth is possible unless we can also deliver growth in Dublin. Between 60% and 65% of our traffic in Dublin is inbound; it is visitors coming to this country. In terms of competition, it is not about people who are sitting abroad and asking if they will go to Dublin, Cork or Shannon for their stag or hen party but whether they will go to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kaunas, Vilnius, Tallinn or Prague. The competition is not between Dublin, Cork and Shannon. It is about getting them onto the island of Ireland or losing them to Scotland, the Baltic states or some other exciting destination in central or eastern Europe.
We believe that we can continue to grow dramatically in Dublin and we know that of that 65% of inbound passengers, 10% to 20% of them will travel outside of Dublin. They will go around the country playing golf and visiting the Wild Atlantic Way, which has been an incredibly successful development. I like to think it was pioneered by a Ryanair executive when he was chairman of Fáilte Ireland. As long as we can get more people on the island we can build outbound traffic. People can come into Dublin and leave from Cork or Shannon. We might also be able to bring new routes into Cork and Shannon and people could leave again out of Dublin. We need to have growth in the overall architecture. It is not a question of not growing in Dublin and just moving passengers to Cork and Shannon because 65% do not want to go to either Cork or Shannon. We can encourage more of them to use Cork and Shannon but only if we can get them into Dublin first. If we do not and if we cap Dublin Airport, there is a problem. As Jason McGuinness said earlier, we had three aircraft planned to go into Dublin this summer and 16 new routes planned. All of those aircraft and those routes have now gone to southern Italy and Poland, for no reason other than the IAA would not give us additional slots to operate and to base those aircraft here. We want to base more aircraft in Dublin, Cork and Shannon. We think Ireland can continue to grow on an all-island basis but we cannot do that unless we can have growth at Dublin Airport as well. Disappointingly, we made that submission to the transport Minister on 7 March but we still have not had a reply from him, two and a half months later.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I was actually going to come on to that. Overall, what has the engagement with the Minister been like, in terms of the output? There was a famous meeting and we know that Mr. O'Leary and the Minister, Deputy Ryan, had a very interesting exchange of views. We were all engrossed in that but what is Mr. O'Leary's overall view of his performance as Minister for Transport?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
That is one more for the electorate. The Minister has a difficult portfolio. He is the Minister for Transport as well as communications and energy and I think his interests lie elsewhere, other than in transport. Therefore, transport is not a high priority. We have, over many years, dealt with Ministers of different hues. The current Minister could do more to resolve these transport issues but I would not just blame him alone. He and the Government need to take action on the traffic cap in Dublin Airport. We need an interim solution while the planning process plays out. The planning application is going to take three or four years to resolve. I have no doubt that the cap will be lifted but lifting a cap from 32 million to 40 million is not the future, as the Leas-Chathaoirleach rightly pointed out. If we lift the cap from 32 million to 40 million we will be at 40 million within about two years and will be back again. We need no cap. We have two runways at Dublin Airport. We have runway and terminal capacity for about 60 million passengers and that would take between ten and 20 years of growth. We would not have to worry about planning although we do have to be sensitive to noise issues. This growth will take place on new, much quieter aircraft. Dublin Airport needs to do more to bring the local residents with it. We will create many thousands of new jobs at Dublin Airport and many more residents and voters in the Fingal constituency as a result as well. There are lots of upsides to this. We should not be dealing with a planning issue when we already have planning approval for infrastructure that allows the airport to grow to 60 million passengers.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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On the planning issue, it is interesting that there is no segregation within our planning system to identify projects that are incredibly important in the context of our national economic interests such as Dublin Airport. It is worth billions to our economy and yet the planning for it is handled at local authority level. It is the same for all of our airports, not just Dublin. I am focusing on Dublin because it is such a dominant force from a traffic point of view. What would Mr. O'Leary do differently in the interests of growing the aviation economy here, including passenger traffic in Dublin Airport, and the sector more generally? What would he do differently?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I have no doubt, and this is not just relevant to the aviation sector, that as a country we need a much more efficient planning system. We need, like most other countries, a streamlined planning process for nationally important infrastructure. Such infrastructure would include airports and power generation. It is a disgrace that we did not go ahead with the LNG facility in Shannon. We have no energy policy in this country. Our energy policy consists of importing gas from the UK and electricity from France. When something goes wrong in the UK or France, we are going to be the first to be cut off. What are we going to do then? We have no backup natural gas and do not have natural resources ourselves. There are lots of plans to have windmills in 2050 and solar power whenever but it is all mañana or in 20 years' time. We need to expedite projects. The children's hospital is an example of how not to develop important infrastructure. It is located in the wrong place. It is about 120,000 sq.ft but the Government has spent about €2 billion building it. We built an office building at Airside that is 120,000 sq. ft. It is a big square box, which is the way all hospitals in America are built, and we spent €20 million building it. We must find ways, as a country, of expediting projects.
One of my great bugbears at the moment is traffic congestion. Dublin is now the second most congested city in Europe. The M50 is a car park. I am a daily commuter, travelling up and down the M4 and the M50. We should be working now on an M75 that links Drogheda, Navan, Kinnegad and on down. We are building houses outside the M50. We are telling our citizens that they can buy affordable housing in Kildare, Westmeath, Meath, Louth and Wicklow but they cannot get in and out of Dublin in the morning unless they use public transport, which does not exist. If we do not start building an outer ring road around the M50 now, traffic congestion is going to become an increasing burden given the number of cars. The port tunnel works great but we need to get the heavy goods vehicles off the M50 because increasingly Dublin commuters are going to be using the M50 and the other arterial roads. I would also be scrapping a huge amount of the useless cycle lanes that have been developed around Dublin in the last five years.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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We are straying off the topic of the Dublin Airport cap-----
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I have yet to find a cyclist in most of them. They are certainly not out on the Rock Road or anywhere else. Cyclists are a much under-appreciated body of men and women but frankly, we are not going to have a functioning city in the next ten or 20 years unless we find ways to deal with congestion. I know there is an environmental argument. The car fleet is going to electrify in the early 2050s but we need to be creating car parking in the centre of Dublin for these cars because it is the only way that citizens who are buying houses outside the M50 are going to be able to get in and out of this town.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Finally, does Mr. O'Leary think aviation emissions get an unfair rap? I was on radio debating this issue recently and made the point that aviation makes up 3% of our emissions. Does Mr. O'Leary think they get an unfair rap in the Irish media?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I do not think they get an unfair rap in the Irish media. I just think there is great ignorance in the Irish media. The Deputy is correct, although the actual figure is 2.4%. Aviation accounts for 2.4% of EU emissions. Marine transport accounts for 5% of Europe's CO2 emissions. When Sky News or George Lee want to show the globe warming up, they do not put up a picture of a ferry pulling out of Dún Laoghaire; it is always an aircraft taking off. There is a picture of an aircraft taking off and we can see the globe warming up behind the aircraft. Aviation accounts for 2.4% of Europe's CO2 emissions. We should pay a fair and reasonable environmental tax. The problem I have with environmental taxes on aviation is that long-haul flights to and from Europe account for 53% of that 2.4% and we completely exempt them from environmental taxes. The people who create the majority of the emissions are completely exempt. The minority are created by European short-haul flights.
By the way, they should pay their fair share. I do not have a problem with that, but it should be a fair share. Those of us living in Ireland on the periphery of Europe do not have a train or cycling alternative to get us to Brussels. We have to fly. We should pay our fair share, but that fair share should be extended to long-haul flights as well. It does not get an unfair rap. It just gets a lot of ill-advised coverage by much of the media. We consume carbon. There is no way we are going to electrify aviation this side of 2050. There is no such propulsion system that can get an aircraft up in the air. We are spending €20 billion on a fleet of new aircraft, with the first deliveries in 2027. Those aircraft carry 20% more passengers, burn 20% less fuel and are 50% quieter than even our existing fleet. The problem in or around Dublin Airport shortly will be that people will not be able to sleep because it will be too quiet. They will have forgotten what having an aircraft overhead between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. sounds like.
I thank Deputy O’Connor for his support. He has been a great supporter of Cork Airport. We are continuing to grow strongly in Cork Airport with the support of him and other Cork Deputies.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Just to point out that the last ferry from Dún Laoghaire was in 2015, and it is fair to say that Ryanair was probably the cause of its demise. When you could get a plane to Liverpool for €9.99, why would you go to Holyhead? I am sure we will get Mr. George Lee to do a programme from Dublin Port at some stage.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I compliment Mr. O’Leary’s father, who apparently travelled business class to London but made sure that Mr. O’Leary travelled with the great unwashed on a ferry. Good. It probably gave him the grounding he has today.
He accepts that the noise issue in Dublin Airport is a DAA problem. I went to a house in St. Margaret’s at 4.30 a.m. I stood in the sitting room of the house chatting to a few people. I believe it was Councillor Joe Newman who brought me out there. We were chatting away and, the next thing, an aircraft would take off and we could no longer hear one another in the room.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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It was more long-haul than short-haul aircraft that were causing the serious noise, although I may be wrong on that. It struck me that these people had tried to negotiate and work with the Dublin Airport Authority but had not been successful.
I am ignorant on the issue of slots, so forgive me. When Aer Lingus was being sold off, there was a big question about the slots that were guaranteed at Heathrow. Mr. O’Leary mentioned that Ryanair had to negotiate slots with the IAA annually. Is that all slots or does Ryanair have a number of slots that are regularly assigned to it?
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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There is nothing wrong with losing a business. I have done it myself.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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It is the same in politics.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
That is probably true.
The noise at Dublin Airport is an issue for us all. It is easy for me to be flippant. Dublin Airport was opened in 1939, so anyone who bought a house – this is the easy answer – knew there was an airport there. What is not fairly covered is the amount of investment in new engines and new aircraft that is dramatically reducing noise. We have videos on our website and those numbers are correct. The decibel levels at St. Margaret’s, Ballyboughal and so on when an aircraft is overhead are between 53 and 55 dB. O’Connell Street Bridge is 72 dB. I would never say there is not a noise issue. Certainly, Dublin Airport needs to do more on housing insulation. I was furious with RTÉ doing the usual rubbish coverage of this issue approximately six months ago, interviewing some teary-eyed lady in her house about how her children could not sleep.
There are no flights taking off between midnight and 7 a.m. I am surprised anyone let two politicians into their living room at 4.30 a.m., but if that happened, then it might have been a transatlantic aircraft landing. That would have been unusual. To be fair, even those aircraft are dramatically quieter now than they were.
Having two runways instead of one and using both at least reduces the number of movements over anyone’s individual property by 50%, and those movements are taking place on dramatically quieter aircraft. The DAA has more to do on insulation and other measures and we as the airlines need to invest more in improving the noise performance of our aircraft, but we also need to push back against – I say this with some trepidation – some of the NIMBYism from people out there who will never be happy no matter what we do. That is factually correct to say. There were 26,000 noise complaints in 2022 or 2023, of which 24,200 came from one individual. Thank you very much, but go away. There are challenges and we all need to address the noise issue. If we want to grow Dublin Airport – and we do – then we have to be a good neighbour to the people living around it, but what about people who are being unreasonable and making unreasonable complaints? RTÉ featured a national school and the noise over the playground was “dreadful”. When we went out and measured the noise over that playground when an aircraft was overhead, it was 58 dB. With the greatest of respect, kids are only in school from around 9.30 a.m. until 4 p.m. When they are out in the playground, they are not suffering aural damage. That said, we still need to invest in more aircraft that will reduce noise.
On the matter of slots, there are two issues. There are slot-constrained airports like Heathrow and Gatwick where an airline holds slots every year and, as such, has historic rights to them. Those airports are not growing, so airlines are not applying to them, but airlines still have to apply for the slots every year. Occasionally, an airline might lease or transfer a slot to someone else, which starts a process. That is not where we are. When Aer Lingus was sold to IAG, the Government rightly put in protections on the Heathrow and Gatwick slots, but IAG has now taken the Gatwick slots. Aer Lingus no longer flies to Gatwick and those slots are being used for something else.
My colleagues can correct me if I am wrong, but at Dublin, Cork and Shannon, we file our winter and summer schedules and are entitled to the historic slots, but we cannot get the extra slots we need for the winter extras. Is that correct?
Mr. Eoin Kealy:
We file twice per year for the summer and winter slots. We file each individually. Last winter, we operated 6.4 million of historic seats in Dublin. We got all of those back this year. What we did not get were the extra 500,000 seats we operated on ad hoc slots, composed of 260,000 extra seats at Christmas and the extras across mid-term breaks, etc. The IAA has not approved those this year, nor will it, because they are capped.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Even though they were historic. We are above the cap, so the IAA is under pressure to reduce flights. The problem is that it is a calendar cap, so the pressure comes on at Christmas. The IAA let additional flights in during the summer, so it will have to cut the Christmas flights because there was more growth during the summer and it now has to get the passenger numbers back under 32 million.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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Mr. O’Leary threw the elephant into the middle of the room when he adverted to the Minister and his responsibilities. He is the Minister for transport, climate change, communications, the environment and everything else you are having. No organisation would have one person trying to run so many different elements. I received a letter from the Minister for Transport and his then Minister of State while we were discussing the search and rescue service negotiations that were under way in which they openly admitted that they had no oversight of transport and they trusted the officials to do it. That is a serious problem. It is a societal problem for Ireland. Having Ministers with five or six portfolios does not work.
My final question is about something that is not unusual in Europe. Aldergrove in Northern Ireland shares its airport between civilians and the military. To throw Mr. O’Leary a side ball, is there any potential in looking at Baldonnel as an alternative to Dublin?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
No, as the runway is too short. However, Baldonnel could be useful. One of the ways additional space could be created at Dublin Airport would be by moving the private aircraft to Baldonnel. Since it is close to the M50, it would be equally as accessible. The Microsoft private jet and all the other American private jets could readily be moved there.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Could cargo go there?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
No. Baldonnel does not have the capacity. It is a shortish runway and the airport does not have many facilities.
In any case, it will not ultimately provide a solution. Tony Ryan, back in the day, had the idea that we would build and grow at Baldonnel but it was never really a viable solution. Certainly, our airforce would be better off, and the Government would be as well. The situation is a disgrace but I understand the political realities. The Government should have two or three private jets. It is a disgrace that when the Taoiseach and Ministers go to European summits and so on, they are not arriving there on some kind of State aircraft. Messing around with leasing aircraft is wasting lots of taxpayers' money. We should grow up on this issue. If the Taoiseach or Tánaiste needs to get to a meeting somewhere, the time saving on a private jet would be more than justified. This idea of not wanting to be seen getting on a private jet is a nonsense. We have a couple of old and tatty Lear jets that are always breaking down. The Government should spend €20 million or €30 million on a proper private jet. If the Taoiseach or Tánaiste needs to go to a meeting, it should be used for that. The airforce will operate it.
On the other issue raised by the Senator, one of the challenges facing this country over the next decade is that our population will grow from 5 million to 6 million. There is net immigration of approximately 100,000 a year. We have a strong economy. If we do not have net inward migration, we will not have people to staff our hospitals and do many of the labour and agricultural jobs. We must consider what needs to be done now, given that by 2035 or 2040, the population of this country will be 6 million or 6.5 million. We need to build more housing. To be fair, the Government is getting on top of the housing situation. However, all the houses are being built outside the M50. How will people get in and out of town? There are objections to petrol and diesel cars because of their emissions. By the early 2030s, most of the car fleet will be electric. We are strangling Dublin with cycle lanes and artificial nonsensical restrictions on car movements. We should be building car parks in the centre of the city for electric cars in order that people can move easily in and out of the centre of the city. We should be fixing planning now for a motorway, an M75, around the M50. We should be putting in place that kind of infrastructure.
Dublin Airport is part of that. It will have 50 million passengers a year by 2035 or 2040. We will have a booming tourism industry. Swords will be a much bigger, wealthier town and community because Dublin Airport will continue to be an engine for it. All of that needs to be done in an environmentally sustainable and noise-efficient way. The problem is we have a Minister for Transport when we should have a Minister for infrastructure. That change should be made under the next Government. We do not plan well for the following ten years. The location of the children's hospital is a disgrace. It should be located on the M50. The way we have burned through €2 billion or €3 billion building what is a reasonably straightforward facility is a disgrace. We do not do infrastructure properly. Instead of having a Ministry of transport, communications and whatever else you are having yourself, we should have a Ministry of infrastructure that sets out ten-year and 15-year plans, making assumptions on what our population will be and how we get from here to there over that ten- or 15-year period. Then we would not have issues like we have seen with the DAA or the badly designed and ridiculously delivered children's hospital. I would hope, in that scenario, we would have much more effective delivery of infrastructure. We do not do infrastructure well because we do not focus on infrastructure. Its delivery gets divided between five or six Departments.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I think Mr. O'Leary will find-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Sorry, Senator Craughwell, I want to let in the next speaker.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I will finish on this.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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No. Some members need to leave for a vote. Deputy Smith wants to speak. I will let Senator Craughwell back in later.
Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I will not come back in, a Leas-Chathaoirligh.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I have a couple of points. It is not cycle lanes that are strangling Dublin; it is cars. As someone who famously bought a taxi licence years ago when Dublin was not as congested, Mr. O'Leary knows the congestion is caused by cars. We need better traffic management systems across public transport, private car use, cycle lanes and all the rest. However, come on, Mr. O'Leary.
I checked out the video on aircraft noise to which reference was made because I was intrigued by what I heard. I had actually seen it previously. I did not realise it was the same video to which Mr. O'Leary was referring. Aircraft noise monitoring is a sophisticated scientific endeavour. The WHO, based on a huge amount of research, has acknowledged the physical health impacts of aircraft noise. The technology Ryanair used in the video is not very credible. It is just short of buying a noise monitor in a Smyths Toys store. It is not Ryanair's role as an airline to monitor aircraft noise. It has a responsibility to modernise and improve its aircraft fleet as per the available technology, and it is doing do. Monitoring aircraft noise is the role of the DAA or the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority, ANCA. Wading into the debate with a video such as the one referenced is not helpful.
I agree with Mr. O'Leary on the emissions trading scheme, ETS. There needs to be a fair split in terms of how that is being shared out. There has not been enough discussion in that regard. The previous interaction the committee had with Mr. O'Leary was on trade union recognition. Now I am agreeing with him and he is talking about paying a fair share of tax.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I am questioning lots of things now.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I do not know whether Mr. O'Leary is going in Deputy Smith's direction or the other way around.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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This will keep me up at night. We need a fair distribution of the ETS. It absolutely should be on the level.
Will Mr. O'Leary speak for 30 seconds about sustainable aviation fuel, SAF? Where is Ryanair at with its investment in Trinity College Dublin and where is that going? I am sorry to be in such a rush.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I disagree fundamentally with the Deputy on his first point. Going around St. Stephen's Green, it is clearly not cars that are the problem. There is one lane for cars going around the green. When I was going to college in the early 1980s - admittedly, as my children would say, that was the last bloody century - there were four lanes of traffic going around St. Stephen's Green. There is now one lane for cars and one lane for bicycles. There are not that many bicycles in the cycle lane. I went out the Rock Road to Blackrock Clinic recently. There is one lane of traffic on the road, which is one of the main arteries in and out of Dublin, and one cycle lane with not a bicycle on it.
There is no way we will have a liveable city 20 years from now when we are building all the houses outside the M50 and expecting people to commute in and out of Dublin. Public transport will not serve those diverse communities. Some communities will be served, including those in Maynooth, for instance, and elsewhere in Kildare. Ultimately, however, we need to make it easy and affordable for people to drive in and out of town. That requires more traffic lanes, fewer cycle lanes and much more car parking. The quays are a good example. In my day, there were four lanes along the quays, one for car parking and three for traffic. We are now down to one lane of traffic, two taxi lanes, for which I am very grateful as I get to fly up and down the quays in one of them, and one cycle lane. The functioning lungs of Dublin are the quays and St. Stephen's Green. We need to loosen them up and make them work. They are not working at the moment.
We have a huge problem in regard to SAF. We have already signed up to supply agreements on SAF for about 10% of our fuel needs by 2030. We have set a target for ourselves to get to approximately 12.5%. The European mandate is 6%. Ireland has no SAF. This country is the beneficiary of about €250 million a year in ETS tax revenues that are returned to the Government. It is one of the issues we have raised. I gave a copy of our submission on it to the committee. In a letter we wrote to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, we pointed out that Ireland received €163 million in ETS revenues in 2023, which were mainly from Ryanair passengers. That revenue will grow to €240 million in 2024. The Government is using that income, wrongly, in my view, to subsidise and fund the school bus fleet. I have no issue with the school bus fleet but it comes under the budget of the Department of Education.
I have asked the Minister why he is not using that ETS revenue to incentivise and, if needs be, subsidise the oil majors, who are the only people who will produce SAF in Ireland. He is focused on storing SAF in Shannon Airport, where there apparently are three big tanks under the runway. They are no good to us there. We need to have SAF at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. SAF production is being subsidised and incentivised by the Dutch, Austrian, German and French Governments. Our Government is one of the few in Europe that is not incentivising the production of SAF at home. Unless we start doing that, we will have no SAF in this country in 2030, when Ryanair and the other airlines would want to buy SAF and uplift its usage here. This is another gap and failure in our transport policy under the Minister. It is an issue he should be on top of. The Green Party loves talking about SAF but when it comes to delivering it in this country, it has no policy at all.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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It does not like to talk about planes at all.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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That is true.
Mr. Eoin Kealy:
To address one thing on the SAF, the DAA plans to spend €3.1 billion over the next three years, which is a 45% increase. Of those funds, it has devoted the grand total of €1.7 million to SAF in respect of a development plan and research for hydrogen fuels. The DAA has no plan for SAF.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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Okay.
Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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That is the DAA. Okay. That is good.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I will contribute briefly and then we will let the witnesses go. The Minister with responsibility for tourism is also from the Green Party. Has Ryanair had any contact with her in regard to not being able to bring in these 65% of inbound passengers because the planes cannot land due to not being able to get the slots and the impact of the cap? Has the airline had any engagement with her?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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They are in the room next door at the moment, but anyway.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
To be fair, there are enough tourism agencies between Fáilte Ireland and all the others, including ITIC and the Irish Hotels Federation. They are all onside in this regard. Everybody thinks the passenger cap is insane. I will send the committee a copy of the letter we sent to the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan, on 7 March.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
We have tried to be positive. It is not just a matter of us demanding the cap be lifted and saying it is stupid. We are asking that the cap be lifted because that will allow us to guarantee growth of 50% in traffic over the next five or six years. This would fill all the hotels and restaurants and create enormous new employment opportunities here. I find it deeply disappointing that having given the Minister, Deputy Ryan, our proposal and it now being some two and a half months later, he has not lifted a finger, has not replied and has not done anything at all. We did get some letter from the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, but it did not say anything. It was pretty much the case that it acknowledged our letter and said it was being looked at.
We are Europe's largest airline. If we make a big submission to our Minister for Transport, then we expect action and a reply. I wonder what would happen if any other multinational came to Ireland and promised to invest what we are promising to invest in this scenario. Basing another 16 aircraft here would represent €2 billion of additional investment and create about another 7,500 jobs. If any other multinational came here and made this offer, its representatives would be straight off to Farmleigh or wherever it is the Government operates in this respect these days. I think we suffer sometimes because we are Irish and that there is an assumption, "Ah sure, it is just Ryanair". We should, and the Government should, have a more focused approach on capturing this growth because it is being lost to other EU countries now.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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In one of the documents the airline sent to us, there was one point about the Dublin Airport subsidy scheme or something like that. It was mentioned that there was some kind of scheme that is supposed to incentivise companies to bring new aircraft on stream. Ryanair, however, is quite critical of that scheme. Why?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I do not know the scheme, so perhaps it could be explained to us.
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
I will not explain the technology, but, basically, the scheme is that there should be lower charges for more environmentally efficient aircraft like ours. The way the DAA has implemented the scheme means it penalises our more environmentally efficient aircraft. The IAA actually intervened in this regard about a month ago and told the DAA to go back and revise this measure because its environmental modulation scheme was not working and was penalising greener aircraft and incentivising older aircraft. It is insane. Perhaps Mr. McGuinness may have more detail on this scheme.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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None of these newer aircraft is based in Dublin now.
Mr. Jason McGuinness:
All our newest aircraft were moved out of Dublin Airport precisely because other European airports are incentivising next-generation aircraft. We moved them to where the costs are the lowest. Three weeks ago, the IAA came out and told the DAA its scheme was not fit for purpose and to please look at it again. The DAA must reply to the IAA within the next four weeks or thereabouts.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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As a committee, we visited Amsterdam and Rotterdam airports and we went with Ryanair on one of the next-generation aircraft. I did not realise this situation existed. Presumably, some of these aircraft are still coming in from other bases. Is that correct?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
This is significant. There is a noise penalty now. It is modest, but there is a noise penalty for residents around the airport. As Deputy Smith rightly said, the DAA continuously mismanages the situation not just for its airport customers but also for the neighbouring community. It is not incentivising us or Aer Lingus to put into use the quieter aircraft here in Dublin even from the perspective of being a community incentive or of being a better neighbour to residents who live around the airport. This just goes to show the disconnect that exists in this regard. The DAA, however, will not fix the car parks either and is saying, "Sorry, we are full and there is nothing we can do about it". I would be very critical of the DAA management in that respect.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Does Mr. O'Leary have any questions he would like the committee to put to Kenny Jacobs next week, other than what the €250 million tunnel is for?
Mr. Michael O'Leary:
Yes. One would be to query what is the health and safety issue concerning parcels going across the taxiway. A second would be why the DAA has not spent this winter and the last 12 months opening more temporary car-parking space, especially to relieve the pressure in this regard during the peak summer months. The third would be to ask why the DAA does not have an environmental incentive to encourage airlines to use quieter and more fuel-efficient aircraft and why the IAA has said the DAA's environmental incentive scheme is not fit for purpose and that it should go back and revise it.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Okay. That will get us going next week. We will draw the meeting to a close at this point, unless Deputy Smith has another question.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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We could probably talk for another couple of hours but I think we have covered many points in this discussion. I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is important that we hear from Ryanair as the biggest airline operating at Dublin Airport. Obviously, we all know this fact. It is a significant part of the airport. It is the same with Aer Lingus, which is not as big as Ryanair but is still a big airline. We asked its representatives to come in.
I am just wondering about the flights. Ryanair has 33 aircraft based here now. Presumably, however, many other Ryanair planes are coming into Dublin Airport from other bases. Is there an analysis of the figures in this regard? Is it that 75%, for example, is based on Dublin traffic or that 25% is coming from other bases or has anyone ever looked at these figures?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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Is it? Okay. Effectively, if passengers are flying on Buzz, Air Malta or Lauder, although that is a slightly different case because it uses the A320, it is exactly the same really, is it not?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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It is exactly the same inside and the same service and everything. They are all Ryanair codes. The only difference is that there are slightly different uniforms and, possibly, slightly different paint on the outside of the aircraft.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I again thank the witnesses for what Ryanair does for Irish people and also for Irish tourists and people coming to Ireland. The airline makes an enormous contribution. I know that people in Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and all these other countries also benefit from Ryanair's services. We sometimes forget how big the airline is. It is a little like the old days when Smurfit was much bigger outside Ireland than inside it. Does Dublin represent 7% of Ryanair's business?
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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A massive amount of stuff is happening, therefore, that we do not see an awful lot of-----
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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-----it unless we are on the way on the runway. The committee members visited Seville last year and we could see that Ryanair was the biggest airline in that airport.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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That is 100% correct. I thank Mr. O'Leary and all his colleagues for being here and for giving up their time. We got a lot of insights from this discussion and we will take up the issues that arose with the representatives of the DAA next week and, indeed, with the Minister, Deputy Ryan, in the weeks after. I thank the witnesses.
Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. O'Leary very much.