Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The debate on this Bill has been very educational for many residents of Fingal who have only become aware of this issue as a result of figures provided on Dublin Airport. Fingal County Council prepared a noise plan recently which found there had been a 450% increase in exposure to high levels of aircraft noise. The number of people exposed in the Fingal borough increased by 5,300 as a result of new developments in the constituency the Taoiseach and I share, which includes Tyrrelstown, Hollystown and Hollywoodrath. Those residents are only starting to become aware of the problems they will face and this Bill has caused them to become active on this issue.

A European Commission study of 224 airports in Europe found that half of them had curfews in place, in other words, they did not allow night flights, one in five had noise limits, one in five had traffic restrictions and 3% had noise budgets. Dublin Airport has none of these measures in place. It also incentivises airlines to land after 11 p.m. by not applying overnight parking fees. Regardless of what happens here today, what does the Minister intend to do about that? As the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, he has just agreed to remove from legislation very important amendments intended to keep noise levels below the range of decibels the World Health Organization considers appropriate. Everybody believes that the Dublin Airport Authority will try to change the current restrictions in the planning conditions, based on the argument put forward by Fianna Fáil that it would be in the commercial interest of the airport to do so.

There is no balancing of the rights of residents who bought homes in the area. What happened in the Seanad was really sly because everybody knows that House is not a representative or democratic body. The Government tried to abolish the Seanad a short time ago and the House was only retained as a safeguard because people lack trust in all politicians, especially those from the big parties. We now see people who were not elected by the residents of the affected area trying to shaft some of the existing protections. I know this is hard for Fianna Fáil because it supports the Government but failing to keep some protections for residents is unacceptable. Facts and figures have been sent by residents showing the gross exaggeration of the impact of protections on flights. I may return to that issue later.

See this speech in context