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.