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MIDLANDS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - WILL IT FLY? Fine Gael said Dublin should have a second airport. Ryanair's Michael O'Leary may dismiss the proposal as insane, but this idea has wings, says John Burns
The proposal hadn't been given much thought, though. Asked what research underpinned the idea, Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael's transport spokesman, admitted there was none. So little thought, in fact, that Fine Gael wrongly presumed Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, would support the plan. Had they so much as run it through Google first, the party would have found that O'Leary is a long-standing and vocal opponent of the idea. Within 24 hours he had dismissed the proposal as "insane" and "stupid". Mitchell was "surprised" at his reaction, declaring it was very "short-sighted" of O'Leary to condemn Fine Gael's unresearched suggestion out of hand. Given the lukewarm reaction last week, the party is likely to refine its proposal before the general election. An uncontroversial promise of a "feasibility study into Irish aviation" will probably be put in its election manifesto instead. But had Fine Gael dug a little deeper it would have found considerable support for a second Dublin airport and many experts who see logic in the proposal. Unlike many of the party's ideas, this one might actually have wings. THE main argument in favour of a second airport is that the current one, already struggling, eventually won't be able to cope. It handled 21 m passengers last year, up from 18.4m in 2005, putting it among the 10 busiest airports in Europe. A
second terminal is due to be opened in 2009, but given the long delays
that beset all big infrastructure projects, the date is optimistic.
When it is built, Dublin will be able to manage 35m passengers a year.
That should be enough to keep it going until 2020, by which time more
"Do we want another Heathrow-type development at Dublin airport?" Enda Kenny asked last week. "If it continues at 10% growth the second terminal, which took 10 years for the government to make a decision about, will be at capacity by the time it is operational. Do you then move on to continue that kind of development on the current site? Would you not be far better to look at options. . . in some other location also?" the Fine Gael leader asked. The government has already considered this, but not reached a conclusion. Micheal Martin, the enterprise minister, revealed on the radio last year that a second Dublin airport had been "floated from time to time" at the cabinet table. The government is often accused of not planning far enough ahead, of underestimating where Ireland will be in 10 or 20 years' time. This is the logic behind a second Dublin airport: it is not needed now, but will be by the time it is built. "We need to look at it now, because we are building like crazy around Dublin," said Mitchell. "You have to keep your flight paths free of development. It will be hard to get planning permission for any future airport if you don't minimise development in that area." Although the military airport at Baldonnel could be upgraded, supporters of the idea think a better option is a greenfield site in the midlands. Indeed, Bord na Mona has already offered the government a cutaway bog near Portarlington. "The notion of continuing to develop Dublin airport does not make a lot of sense," said Jim Power, chief economist with Friends First. "It is in a seriously congested part of the city. An international airport in the middle of Ireland is logical. "If you were to start with a greenfield site, you could run high-speed links to Galway, Cork, the southeast and Dublin. It would be consistent with the national spatial strategy, would de-congest a very congested city and would not create more problems on the M50 and other routes." Sean Barrett, a lecturer in economics at Trinity College, is supportive. "Europe has a big supply of airports; Ireland East doesn't," he said. "Dublin has a monopoly for 80 to 100 miles. That doesn't happen anywhere else in Europe." It will be difficult to make Dublin more efficient, he believes, as the second terminal will be run by the same crowd as the first one. He argues that competition has been good for British airports - Bristol versus Cardiff, Birmingham against the East Midlands, Prestwick taking on Glasgow and would be good for Dublin too. O'Leary is one of Barrett's former students and the Ryanair boss has always been opposed to a second Dublin airport. It seems an odd position for someone so fanatical about competition. He reckons Ireland is simply too small for five international airports as well as six smaller ones. Manchester, which has 6.3m people in a 30-mile radius, gets by with one. An airport in the midlands would not be practical because of fog, O'Leary has said. "I drive from there early in the morning and return late in the evening. For some reason Mullingar always seems to get fog," he explained to the Oireachtas transport committee a few years ago. "We
are over-supplied with airports here. We can develop Dublin, Shannon,
Cork and Knock. That would put every-body within one hour of an airport."Those
expansions are already happening. Cork, which handles 3m passengers
a year, recently opened a new terminal and will soon be able to cope
with 5m. Shannon will be doing the same by 2014. Dublin, although
a well-organised local lobby group will hate you for saying it, has
plenty of room to expand. Terminal 2 is on the north side of the existing
facilities Asked recently where it could expand further, Declan Collier,
the airport's chief executive, said: "The potential for O'Leary points out that Gatwick car cope with 40m passengers from one run way, so Dublin could double in size with, out even building another runway let alone a second airport. "We shouldn't underestimate the huge embedded cost and value there is in the infrastructure that we have at Dublin airport," Julie O'Neill, secretary-general of the Department of Transport, told a recent aviation conference. "We shouldn't underestimate how far-sighted the original planners of Dublin airport were, putting us in a position that is somewhat unique in Europe - and the envy of many of the countries I visit - of having an airport with the capacity to grow and develop." O'Neill admitted, however, that "once we get beyond the next 20, 30 years or so" the question will arise as to where "the next significant airport development" should be. But won't aviation have changed so much by then that Ireland will be shutting airports instead of opening them? THE Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said recently that aircraft pollution will eventually be such a big contributor to global warming that expansion of Britain's airport capacity should be halted for good. Aircraft exhaust emissions are particularly harmful in terms of global warming, the commission said, because they go directly into the atmosphere at a high level. So far aviation has got away lightly in the squeeze on carbon emissions. But the heat is starting to rise and O'Leary is among those beginning to feel it. A British environment minister has branded his airline "the irresponsible face of capitalism" for opposing a European Union carbon emissions scheme. O'Leary snorted that a "a lot of bull" was being peddled by "a couple of environmental nutters" and "nutbags", pointing out that aviation contributes less than 2% of greenhouse gases. The amount, if not the percentage, is growing in Ireland, however, from 1m tons in 1990 to 2.4m in 2005. That in a country set to breach its Kyoto emission targets by 2010 and which faces large fines in punishment. So you might expect the Green party, Fine Gael's likely coalition government partner, to oppose the idea of ripping up a greenfield site in the midlands for noisy, gas-guzzling jumbos. Eamon Ryan, the party's spokesman, says before any decision is taken there should be a review of the country's aviation strategy. "It's not feasible to allow a further doubling in airport passenger numbers because climate change is going to dictate something different," he said. "It's not fair to tackle climate change in terms of the cement industry and cars and not include aviation. Every sector has to help." Rather than putting up "House Full" signs, however, and placing a ceiling on the number of flights in and out of Ireland, Ryan says market-based measures are the way to control growth. That could mean larger planes, more fuel-efficient aircraft and more use of trains for short hauls such a Dublin-Cork. All internal flights are subsidised by the government, he points out. Power
agrees that putting an artificial constraint on aviation wouldn't
make sense. "How do you convince people to stop flying? Make
it prohibitively expensive. Make passengers pay for the carbon footprint
they create." Barrett says the era when it cost IR£650 (€825) to fly to Brussels and £208 (€264) to London" did massive damage to the Irish economy". Railways might work for central Europe, but the only Irish people who will benefit from higher aviation fares are "the fellows ahead of the curtain - senior civil servants, politicians and journalists on freebies. To restore that world would damage 99% of the population". In the era of high air fares, Ireland was stuck at 2.5m tourists for 20 years. Now we have 7.5m. "Access is highly valuable to us," Barrett said. "And is railway so much superior? If so, how come it is more expensive for passengers to take the heavily subsidised train to Cork than it is to fly?" Plenty
there for Fine Gael's feasibility study, if Kenny ever gets to commission
it. As Ryan quips, the only emissions it will cost is "the carbon
in the paper it's printed on". |
