UPROAR Press Release: 30 Sep 2006
Runway to nowhere?

The parties supporting the proposed new parallel runway at Dublin Airport have adopted an extraordinary new position at the oral hearing at An Bord Pleanála now taking place in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, into the appeals against the granting of planning permission by Fingal County Council (FCC) for the new runway.

On Friday 29 September, FCC put it to the oral hearing that, of itself, the runway will have no adverse effects on road traffic because any increases in air traffic and passengers on the new runway will not occur until a new terminal is built. Although yet unstated by them, it must also follow that the same ridiculous claim would apply to the runway's generation of aircraft noise, air pollution and other negative effects
due to an increase in aircraft movements on the new runway. They want to transfer responsibility for the negative impacts of the new runway onto the proposed new terminal for Dublin Airport, and want to defer all consideration of those impacts until the planning process for Terminal 2.

This is a wholly unacceptable and preposterous attempt to pervert An Bord Pleanála's scrutiny of the proposal to ensure good planning in the public interest and avoid unnecessary damage to our environment and society.

The opponents of the runway, including the Portmarnock Community Association - UPROAR, said at the oral hearing that this claim that the new runway would not, of itself, generate any traffic problems was absurd; it was self-evident, and already admitted by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), that the runway would have a significant impact on road traffic, inter alia.

Mr Trevor Sargent, leader of the Green Party, who also spoke at the oral hearing on Friday, strongly rejected this ludicrous contrivance. He mentioned in particular his concerns as a teacher about the unacceptable impacts, noise from this runway would have on 11,500 children in 19 schools in the area. He also said that, as far as National Spatial Strategy was concerned, the runway proposal was jeopardising the
national interest by exacerbating the persistent economic imbalances between the Greater Dublin Area and the West. Deputy Sargent also decried the absence of a national aviation policy that should properly take account of all the implications of the looming peak-oil crisis, and the cost impacts of global warming due to aircraft emissions.

From a public policy and public expenditure point of view - and huge public resources are at stake here - the new position adopted by the runway's proponents instantly disqualifies it under the guidelines issued by the Department of Finance for the appraisal of such proposed investments by public bodies. An investment of at least €2.5 billion of resources that will, by the admission of its proponents generate, of itself, no additional air traffic and therefore no returns to that investment, is clearly a total waste of resources and should go no further.

From an environmental impact point of view, the new position makes a nonsense of the Environmental Impact Statement already submitted by the DAA, which clearly states that the runway will generate an additional 10 million passengers and insists that these extra passengers will be lost if the runway is not built. The EIS repeatedly refers to the impact of extra aircraft movements and associated extra passengers on road traffic, noise and air pollution, etc., while, of course, attempting to understate those impacts. The explanation now put by the DAA at the oral
hearing for the contradiction between its own EIS and the new claim by FCC, is that the EIS presented a "worst case scenario" and that the DAA has provided more information in its EIS than is strictly required.

It beggars belief that two public bodies (a public company and a local authority) would collude in this cynical attempt to avoid public accountability for their actions and to hoodwink the taxpayer. The Minister for Finance who is the principal shareholder of the DAA and who has recently announced a tough "value for money" position, must demand an explanation from the Board of the Dublin Airport Authority to ascertain if this is indeed their position, and if so, he must immediately instruct them to withdraw their preposterous runway proposal and to have it subjected to his own department's guidelines for the appraisal of such proposals.

UPROAR's appeal documents can be seen at www.norunway.com/bp/bp.htm.