Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Residents in the Dublin 15 area are increasingly perplexed by the Minister's approach to the Bill. Essentially, we have a growing Dublin Airport and we want to see good jobs, good employment and the development of the airport. The airport, however, is more and more looking to run very early morning flights right into the middle of the day. Housing is developing in many different areas of Dublin 15 under flight paths or extremely close to flight paths. Although they are aware that Dublin Airport is very close, people are concerned that when they finally get to buy their houses - which can be very expensive - there will be no indication and no information available as to when flight paths change. I am contacted regularly by people who find that there are more flights flying closer to their houses.

From other European cities we are aware of fantastic technical advances that have been made, and some technical advances have been made at Dublin Airport over the decades, such as changes to aircraft technology to reduce noise levels and running flights in a particular way to mitigate the noise. This is well known with regard to busy airports around the world but some airports are better at this than others.

We should strengthen the Bill in a way that will increase the right of householders to not be completely overcome by noise levels just because the regulation is weak. When people currently complain to Dublin Airport, often all they get is an invitation to meet with somebody, but this does not go anywhere and their concerns are not addressed. This is very important, especially as the Minister has chosen the council to be the regulator. We have discussed this matter previously. We all know the airport is part of the council's remit and part of the council's bread and butter. We are looking at regulation by an entity that has a vested interest in the development of the airport. This is publicly known. It is part of the council's job to ensure the airport develops appropriately.

We want a clear indication in the language of the legislation to address people's concerns, particularly those people moving into new or existing houses in areas such as Hollystown, Hollywoodrath, Blackwood or Ongar where people are increasingly complaining about aircraft noise and have no proper channel by which to have their complaints addressed. It does not seem this will happen in the legislation as currently proposed. We support the change of wording proposed by amendment No. 55 to "authorise", which is stronger language. The amendment is to even out the scales between the people who live in the vicinity of the airport who are subject to the noise, and Dublin Airport and the Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, in their conducting of the business of operating flights. It is also to ensure that when something happens or goes wrong, people have a genuine remedy they can access and pursue. After the debate on this Bill, people's confidence in the quality of the regulation system nose dived rather than improved.

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