Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

According to a recent report, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were considering a voting pact in the European election campaign that has just begun. The two parties would support each other.

Having heard the Minister and the Fianna Fáil Deputies today, I believe it is logical that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, having worked so hard together as a coalition for the past three and a half years, including on this legislation, should express it in the European and other elections, in order that the rest of us can take them on head to head.

As always, Deputy Clare Daly put her finger on the nub of the issue. Many, if not all, of us in the House believe sustainable development is possible for Dublin Airport. Like others, I have always lived beside an airport because I come from near Baldonnel. When I was growing up and going to get the cattle and so on, fighter jets screamed overhead. I have always been accustomed to living on a flight path and I still live on one. Thankfully, given that the wind comes mostly from the south west, the noise is mostly that of planes coming in to land on the boundary of Dublin Bay North. I am aware of the profound impact it has on the population of St. Margaret's, Cloghran, which was mentioned, and all around the airport. We should certainly aim for sustainable development. All the community bodies, projects, small business centres and so on with which I have worked throughout my career and before entering politics have benefited, in respect of employment and so forth, from interacting with the airport. Nevertheless, we feel that noise and night-time flying are matters that need to be addressed and we had the opportunity in the Bill to do so definitively. My colleague, Deputy Clare Daly, rightly mentioned noise contours. I was proud in the past to represent Portmarnock and the Balgriffin-Kinsealy area, which is profoundly affected. It is important that within all the noise contours, the levels of sound are monitored and closely invigilated, with health at the core.

I listened carefully to the Minister's response to the amendments tabled by my colleagues, Deputies Brendan Ryan, Munster and Clare Daly. It seems the Minister is making it up as he goes along. That is clear from what he said about Regulation No. 598 and the way he set his argument out. There is no reason in the world not to retain Deputy Munster's amendment which related to health in general, although Deputy Brendan Ryan made this point strongly. The Minister is trying to present the matter as a conflict between the country and the European Union over Regulation No. 598 and noise levels. There is no conflict, however, because we are simply seeking to have at the heart of the legislation a recognition of the problem. The Minister refers back to the older legislation but if that deals with the matter, as he claims, in general terms which include World Health Organization guidelines, there is no reason not to accept Deputy Brendan Ryan's amendment, given that it makes the same point the Minister made. The Minister is contradicting himself and, unfortunately, not for the first time in the House, making things up. The centre of the whole issue, which we return to again and again, is regulation. Over the years, the Minister was a furious critic of financial regulation and corporate governance regulation, and rightly so. We remember his long articles about banks, governance throughout the business sector and regulators, which were effectively kidnapped by their industries, but he is doing exactly what he always railed against. He is placing a regulator in that precise situation. Nobody will be able to take it seriously as an independent regulator.

Many of us have received a great deal of poignant correspondence from affected residents and those who live near the flight path. They have said again and again that Fingal County Council cannot be the competent authority because it derives such a substantial part of its revenue from the DAA and that, therefore, it cannot be considered independent. That is an objective fact, irrespective of what Deputy Darragh O'Brien will say. Fingal County Council was created out from the old Dublin County Council 25 years ago. The airport has been the fundamental economic driver of that county council. These correspondents have indicated that the DAA has stated its own opposition to the World Health Organization guidelines. That is the real reason the Minister is not prepared to accept my amendment. The DAA itself - perhaps not the current CEO but some of his predecessors - has stated definitively that it is not prepared to accept the World Health Organization guidelines. That is the reason, not the spurious nonsense the Minister outlined about the difference between the general principle of Regulation No. 598 and what the amendments would insert in the Bill, or rather retain, given that we passed the amendment and the Seanad removed it against our will, which was appalling. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil engineered it in the Seanad. Deputy Darragh O'Brien doth protest too much because he and his colleagues were at the heart of what was achieved in the Seanad by eliminating the references to health and the World Health Organization guidelines.

On St. Margaret's, the Minister was invited to visit it on different occasions and see how bad circumstances can be, where one cannot even open a window. I hope that in the coming days, we will have some warm weather but in St. Margaret's and its environs, one cannot open one's window because the threshold of 60 dB will be easily surpassed.

The Minister spoke about the World Health Organization guidelines at length and outlined the 2002 regulations and changes at EU level. His argument, however, utterly contradicts his general point. He should either accept my amendment and follow the World Health Organization guidelines, or accept Deputy Brendan Ryan's amendment.

While I am not a member of the Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputies Darragh O'Brien and Troy referred to the time that passed before the Bill was brought before the House. There has been great interest in the matter, not least from Deputies Brendan Ryan, Munster and Clare Daly, the last of whom has done colossal work on the area throughout her time in the House. Early last summer, Deputy Clare Daly and I tabled a motion to the House, which I think is still on the full clár published on Tuesdays. The motion acknowledged the 34.4 million passengers in Irish airports in 2017; the increased use of air travel over many years; the probable impact of increased traffic due to Brexit, some of the changes that might happen due to future foreign direct investment and the new relationship we will have with the European Union if Britain finally leaves; and that the airport was planning to have 50 million passengers a year. We asked the Government to note the EU directive planning conditions and environmental impact studies which developed over the past 20 or 25 years-----

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