Opening the "Towards Sustainable Airport Development Conference" at the Great Southern Hotel at Dublin Airport on 23 October Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: "The sustainability test of major development projects aims to ensure that the impact on the wider economic and social environment is taken into account before projects go ahead at all."

The Dublin Airport Authority has failed this test of sustainability as far as its proposed airport expansion is concerned. That was the main thesis of UPROAR's presentation at the airport conference. The presentation contrasted the feeble efforts of the DAA to justify its runway proposal with the rigorous test of sustainability that is laid down by the Department of Finance. In fact, UPROAR maintains that the cost benefit analysis required by the Finance Guidelines to test the sustainability of the proposal has not been done at all. The DAA has therefore failed to demonstrate that it's proposed parallel runway at Dublin Airport is justified in terms of its economic social and environmental impacts, whereas UPROAR using the right methodology, has demonstrated that it is not. On the contrary, the runway will waste, at a minimum, €3 billion of public and private assets and devastate the local environment. Without question, it is an unsustainable development.

The DAA has also failed to make a proper assessment of alternatives to its runway proposal, as the same Guidelines demand. That is hardly surprising as a central plank of the DAA's spin is that this runway was envisaged in the County Development Plan of 1972. UPROAR assessed the economic and social impacts of a second airport serving the Greater Dublin Area and found that it would be economically viable and a boon to areas where unemployment is still a problem. It would not have the negative environmental impacts the expansion at Dublin Airport would have, such as road traffic congestion, and the devastation of established communities by noise and air pollution. In other words, it would be a sustainable development, in contrast to the proposals for Dublin Airport. It would also be consistent with our National Spatial Strategy, despite the DAA's absurd claims that its proposal is justified by that policy.

Ms Julie O'Neill, Secretary General of the Department of Transport, was open about the prospects of such a second airport. Noting earlier references at the conference to the proposals for another airport in the Midlands or in the wider conurbation of Dublin, she said: "There is no policy bar whatsoever from our perspective. Anybody can come forward saying they want to develop an airport elsewhere on the island. Dublin Airport Authority operates as a commercial entity, any other airport that wanted to do that can do so likewise."

Declan Collier, CEO of the DAA, stated that, unlike airlines, airport operators needed to take a long-term view, up to 50 years ahead. However, when asked by UPROAR what he would do in only 25 years time when Dublin Airport was full having reached its maximum of 60 million passengers - a figure given on RTE by Mr Collier - he replied that: "My main problem at the moment is dealing with what we have to do over the next 10 to 15 years so looking out beyond 2030 etc., I'm not going to it." So much for consistency with the long-term 50-year view he advocated minutes before.

Mr Collier was also proud of the fact that Dublin Airport, at €6.34 per passenger had the lowest passenger charge of all major airports in Europe, at less than 50% of the European average charge. He failed to explain that this was because Dublin Airport is hugely subsidised. Passenger charges at Dublin Airport do not include any charge for the use of the vast publicly-owned land bank at Dublin Airport. That is a subsidy of maybe €20 per passenger. If this uncompetitive subsidy was removed, as it might have to be under competition rules, Cork and Shannon Airport would see significant growth and the case for a second airport to be built on the thousands of hectares of state-owned cutaway bog within 50 km of Dublin would be made. Dublin Airport would become a higher cost but more sustainable and efficient Dublin City Airport.

Coincidentally, London City Airport, just sold for €1.1 billion, has an average charge of about €27 per passenger. It is also noteworthy that this tiny airport of 110 acres with 1/10 of the passengers of Dublin Airport is worth nearly double the €600 million figure put by the regulator on the whole of Dublin Airport with its 2,500 acres.

Asked if his valuation of all land at Dublin Airport at less than €20 million was consistent with the "economic efficiency" principle which must govern his regulation of state airports, Aviation Regulator, Dr Cathal Guiomard said: "I think UPROAR's position is that the land should be valued as though it were building development land. I'm pretty sure there are other valuation principles that could be applied as well. It's not completely obvious to me that that's the only valuation principle properly applied in this case."

UPROAR understands this position to mean the Regulator has an open mind on the matter of the valuation method to be applied to airport land and will consult with him further about it.

UPROAR's PowerPoint presentation can be followed here together with an audio file of our presentation. See: www.norunway.com/ac