Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When we have debates, they need to deal with the issues of the day. The burning issue for the public at the moment is that of the delays at Dublin Airport. For future reference, it is critical that any Minister coming in would address many other issues but would also address the issues of the day. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has had to leave the Chamber, but I have no doubt the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, will convey this back to him.

Aviation needs to be front and centre. The Minister is meeting representatives of the DAA and they will also appear before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications at 1.30 p.m. tomorrow. We need to see a plan from the DAA as to how it will ensure that passengers can get through Dublin Airport on time before the upcoming bank holiday weekend when the numbers will double from 50,000 to 100,000 passengers per day into the summer period.

We need to understand how this situation arose last weekend. Was it simply rostering? I accept there is a mismatch with the staff levels being at 70% of what they were in 2019 and traffic volumes at 90% or 95%. Ultimately what happened over the weekend is down to management. The security check workers are under extreme pressure. I regret if passengers took their frustration out on the staff who are checking bags. That should not happen and I regret if it did happen because there are reports that it did.

The public are entitled to a service from the DAA. We look forward to hearing from its representatives at the committee tomorrow. We need to know when its plan which is due to go to Government tomorrow will be published so that we can discuss it in depth.

The burning issue is obviously Dublin Airport. I am a Deputy from the mid-west and Limerick. The national aviation policy was published in 2015. The Joint Committee on Transport and Communications published a report in December 2020 calling for that to be reviewed. We now need to look at our overall policy for the distribution of airline traffic outside Dublin. Dublin Airport is creaking at the seams. Shannon Airport has a capacity to handle 4.5 million passengers per year. It peaked at about 1.7 million. It could take an extra 2 million passengers.

No doubt the same is true for Cork, Knock and other airports. That review needs to be commenced immediately. We need to look at the redistribution of air traffic to places like Shannon and Cork. Passengers can pass through Shannon in 20 minutes. It now has state-of-the-art scanning equipment. Passengers travelling to the US need only have their baggage scanned once whereas through Dublin it can be twice. Passengers can also avail of pre-clearance there. Cork is also a great airport. We are a small island nation and need to think outside the box. The Netherlands has a policy in place to redistribute traffic to other airports in the country to take pressure off Schiphol Airport.

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We need to do likewise.

I will move on to deal with other issues. The Limerick Shannon metropolitan area transport strategy, LSMATS, is currently out to public consultation. There are many good things in it, including the intention to link Shannon Airport to Limerick city by rail. There is a short-term proposal for a bus service from Shannon Airport to link in with the existing rail line at Cratloe and Sixmilebridge. That plan uses the existing rail network. That is something I pushed at a public consultation meeting to consider the first draft of LSMATS. We need to see targets for the roll-out of bicycle lanes and so forth. The Minister intervened to issue a directive to the National Transport Authority, NTA, which is the professional body charged with considering this particular transport strategy for Limerick, and told it not to proceed with stage 2. That was an inappropriate intervention on the part of the Minister. I ask him to reconsider. We are looking for sustainable travel. Limerick has serious traffic problems. The northern distributor road was there for that purpose. The first phase, which was from Coonagh to Knockalisheen, has a bus lane and cycle lanes. We need phase 2 to Castletroy. There are also serious traffic problems in Corbally.

I also ask that the 20% reduction in public transport fares be extended beyond 2022. I would like to see it extended into 2023. It is a proactive measure and I would welcome its extension. We need public transport, road, rail, cycle lanes and buses working in harmony to ensure we have a better sustainable transport system.

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