Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 97:

In page 50, to delete lines 28 to 37, and in page 51, to delete lines 1 to 4.

These are pretty interesting amendments. We had a very interesting discussion about the intent behind them on Committee Stage. When I moved them, I indicated that I was not sure if I was barking up the right tree. It turned out that I was, which made the amendments even more important. These two clauses in the legislation give the DAA the ability to seek to have the existing An Bord Pleanála restrictions on night flights overturned. As has been rightly been pointed out on a number of occasions, this is separate from the legislation providing for a competent authority in the future but, ironically, it is one of the reasons this Bill has been pushed. The intention of the DAA has been abundantly clear. Once the competent authority is in place, its first mission will be to use the structure we will set up here to get those two conditions overturned. That is an incredibly worrying scenario for the residents, many of whom are workers at Dublin Airport.

Let us deal with some of the issues. Nobody wants to shut down Dublin Airport. I worked there. Most of my friends still work there. My constituents work there and we all live close to it. It has been a very important economic driver for all of us and we want that to continue. However, just like the discussion we had on farming earlier, the aviation business has to be seen in the context of climate change, sustainability and the damage done to people's health and the environment. That is not just my objective; it is EU law that we must have this in place. Ten years ago, when we did not know as much about the negative health impacts of aircraft noise as we do now, An Bord Pleanála saw fit to put measures in place to restrict night-time activity. To offset that, it got off lightly in terms of, for example, noise insulation on the understanding that these restrictions would be put in place at night. It does not mean the airport will shut. We have seen the statement from the DAA suggesting that if we bring this in, it would lead to something like a 40% reduction. Air traffic at Dublin Airport will increase when this runway opens. It is good that some of the night-time activity will be more curtailed than previously, but it does not mean that there will be fewer aircraft. It also does not mean that the airport will close or that airlines will locate in other airports. It means it will cost them a bit more money, which is just tough.

The enormous increase in air traffic between 2008 and 2018 has come from the non-business sector. Non-business tourist travellers do not need to get up in the middle of the night in order to fly out of Dublin Airport at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. to go to Fuengirola on their holidays. If they live in Waterford and need to go at 5 a.m., it means having to get up at 1 a.m. in order to drive to Dublin Airport. They are absolutely knackered and the first two days of their holidays are ruined. It does not suit them, but they do it because the airline operators schedule it so they can get the aircraft out and back more than once and increase their revenue.

Making airlines adhere to a night-time restriction means some of their aircraft will not go out and back, but they can still do their scheduling. There are hundreds of people employed in aircraft scheduling who match the airport operators' aircraft with their routes and carry out the planning in that regard. What they would do then, because we are not getting rid of all the aircraft, is that they prioritise the business routes. When airlines want somebody out early and want the businessman or businesswoman to return that night and have a range of flights to facilitate this, their aircraft scheduling allows them to do so without impacting on their sleep. This makes perfect sense. Nobody suffers. I accept that it might mean they have to employ a few more personnel to schedule the flights because they might have to add in more computations and permutations into the arrangements, but it is doable. How do we know it is doable? It is because it is done everywhere else.

This is a quality-of-life issue. The key reason we need this is that mentioned by Deputy Brendan Ryan earlier. The legislation is not complete; it is very imperfect. We cannot have a competent authority, which is also the planning authority, regulating these matters. It is utterly insane to have these two clauses allowing Fingal County Council to overturn the decision it made on planning permission in the first instance. The Minister stated, when Deputy Brendan Ryan asked the question earlier, that the issue of the letter has been dealt with. It has not been dealt with. Fingal County Council is on record as stating it has problems with that. In January 2018, the Government made a decision to appoint Fingal County Council as the competent authority. On the previous occasion, we read into the record correspondence subsequent to that decision from senior officials in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to Fingal County Council in which they were seeking to discover what was the rate base. This shows that the conflict of interest points had not been explored prior to the decision being made. This actually teed up a pretty strong legal action and led to the EU writing to the Minister informing him that the independence of the authority must be sacrosanct.

Subsequently, the residents, by means of freedom of information requests, obtained an outline of all the contact between the Department and Fingal County Council including details from the Minister's diary. There are no records anywhere of the meetings that supposedly took place. The Minister told Deputy Brendan Ryan that it was all right and that Fingal County Council knows it is sorted now. Where are the records? Fingal County Council was supposed to deliver information under freedom of information yesterday and then it postponed doing so until today. As a result, we have not seen any evidence. Where is the paper trail to show that the council changed its mind? Allowing these two clauses to remain will open up a legal nightmare in the future.

See this speech in context