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?