Pádraig Ó Céidigh (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to bring to the attention of the House a huge issue relating to transport in Ireland, which is Dublin Airport. It is a fantastic facility with 30 million passengers passing through annually. That is approximately 83,000 passengers every day. It has exceeded its capacity. The staff at Dublin Airport are great, as Senator Marshall has said. Fantastic people are working hard to try to cope with that volume of passengers, but they are not able to deal with it.

I suggest moving to Baldonnel. That aerodrome is ready and completed. It is used by the Air Corps and is owned by the Department of Defence. The runway is long enough to accommodate the vast majority of commercial aircraft coming to the country. It is nine miles from Dublin city centre and it is located near a significant number of business parks in a greenfield area. Let us consider airports in other cities. In Belfast, for example, Belfast City Airport has 2.6 million passengers and Belfast International Airport has 5.8 million. There are two airports in Belfast. There are two airports in Glasgow - Prestwick and Glasgow Airport. There are 2 million people in the greater Dublin area and 1.7 million in Warsaw, which has three airports. Milan has two airports while Brussels with a population of 1.1 million has two airports.

I hope the House will support my suggestion to ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport through the Leader to actively look at Baldonnel as a second airport for Dublin. It is critical at this stage. We are an island community. If we have a vision for transport to facilitate access, we need to look at an alternative to Dublin Airport.