Airport Authority Defend T2
City Wide News 2- 15 May 2007

The Dublin Airport Authority has gone head to head with budget airline Ryanair this month, questioning the airlines recent statements on the T2 terminal project and other passenger facilities at Dublin Airport.

According· to the DAA, T2 will not cost e750m as Ryanair has stated for some months or even e800 as they advertised recently. Instead, T2 will cost e395m at current prices, according to the Authority, who state that this price has been independently-verified as in line with the cost of equivalent facilities at other large European airports.

Further, the DAA never put a cost of e200m on T2, they state. In the summer of 2005 it put a possible cost on a notional terminal of about e200m. The only budgeted cost published by the DAA for the fully designed, 75,000 sq m terminal it will build at Dublin Airport, is e395m.

Airport charges at Dublin Airport will not double to pay for T2, the DAA continues. The Commission for Aviation Regulation has set Dublin Airports current maximum airport charge per passenger at e6.34. The DAA has sought an increase of just over e1 in the average airport charge over the next three years to pay for T2 and other new facilities, costing a total of el.2bn.

This requested average charge of e7.50 is significantly lower than the cost of many standard airline services. This charge would still leave Dublin Airport with the lowest charges of any major European airport. The Authority also state that no offer was ever refused by the DAA from Ryanair to become a tenant of T2. Ryanair never made an offer to become a tenant of T2 and withdrew from any meaningful consultation about T2 because it claimed, inaccurately, that the terminal was being built in the wrong place, according to the DAA.

Finally, delivery of T2 will not limit annual passenger volumes through Dublin Airport to 30m, DAA sources state. The planning permission granted to the DAA for Dublin Airport states that planning must begin for delivery of a third terminal when passenger numbers reach 30m. T2 will deliver comfortable capacity for up to 35m passengers at Dublin Airport, thus providing up to 10 years of headroom for growth after 2009.Meanwhile, Green Party Leader, Trevor Sargent, made an oral observation at the An Bord Pleanála oral hearing into Terminal 2 at the Radisson SAS
Hotel at Dublin Airport on Friday 20 April.

Mr Sargent said that as Leader· of the Green Party and a Dàil representative for Dublin North he was most concerned about the proper development of the area. He felt, for example, that the Strategic Environmental Assessment that had been made of the development plans of Dublin Airport had not adequately addressed the issue of climate change, which was now an undeniable fact. "The best way that plan could contribute to reducing climate change would be to put a hold on the
development of Dublin Airport. If there is an optimum size for Dublin Airport, what is it? As far as the people of St Margaret's and Portmarnock are concerned, we are already near that optimum," he said.

According to Mr Sargent, it was important for the country to meet its future needs to be carbon neutral. We had international responsibilities in that regard. This was no longer just a matter of the Kyoto protocol where aviation had managed to stay beneath the radar, but of the upcoming post-Kyoto agreement. This agreement will be more rigorous as far as aviation is concerned. He pointed out that: "we have only ten years in which to act to prevent the earth's temperature rising by 2
degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels.

He said that no proper consideration was being given to unbalanced regional development. He noted that the proper development of Fingal should take account of the state of underdevelopment of the Western Seaboard as compared to the Eastern Seaboard. This should be done before proceeding with the further development of the Dublin area in a laissez-faire manner and exacerbating its many problems, including congestion and pollution.

He noted that: "there had been no Cost Benefit justification for these proposals. In terms of 'Value for Money', it is not just an issue of government funds but of land and other resources that are in the custodianship of Dublin Airport. It should not be assumed that the land involved is a given, and is therefore free. Obviously we know that would not be so, if it were sold, given the price of land in the area." Contacted later Mr Sargent said he believed that, on the evidence, the planned expansion of Dublin Airport was socially, economically and environmentally unsustainable.