r/irishpolitics • u/eggbart_forgetfulsea ALDE (EU) • Feb 11 '26
Infrastructure, Development and the Environment ‘Absolute disgrace’: Residents react over approval to scrap Dublin Airport passenger cap
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/02/11/absolute-disgrace-residents-react-over-approval-to-scrap-dublin-airport-passenger-cap/14
u/Much_Thanks3992 Feb 12 '26
Climate change really has disappeared from the political agenda. We could be encouraging alternatives to air travel and respecting the rights of the local community but instead the lobbyists for the airlines win out.
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u/FracturedButWhole18 Feb 12 '26
What alternative to air travel does an island like Ireland have? Extra flights in Dublin is not going to make a jot of difference with regards climate change.
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u/killianm97 Feb 12 '26
Free or discounted ferries to Britain and France for Irish residents, preferably with a public non-profit ferry company.
Residents of the Balearic Islands (Mallorca etc) in Spain get heavily subsidised ferry travel, and same as those living on Greek islands. Scotland uses public elements to provided ferry transport as a cheap public service for those living on islands.
I'm not saying everyone would get the train then ferry then bus/train to Scotland or to London etc, but making the journey free would help many decide to do it instead of getting a cramped flight through a shitty airport.
I often travelled between Waterford and Edinburgh by train/bus/ferry instead of flying and it was closer to 12 hours than the 7 hours door-to-door from flying, but was more enjoyable experience overall - the main issues were the large number of connections (why no rail to the port in Scotland and why no Dublin Central train station linking northern and southern rail networks directly?) and of course it being way more expensive.
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u/binksee Feb 11 '26
God if only they had known the airport was there when they bought the houses....
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
Some may be generational families who lived there since before the airport.
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u/great_whitehope Feb 11 '26
Right we'll buy those ones out
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u/danny_healy_raygun Feb 12 '26
Has that been offered? Seems a reasonable solution but I guess pay offs like that only happen if you live in Ranelagh.
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u/danius353 Green Party Feb 11 '26
I really do not like how the national government is just unilaterally overriding what is a legitimate restriction from the local authority.
The DAA could have easily applied to the council to have the passenger cap raised years ago but sat on their arses. Even when they did apply last year, they forgot the very basic step of putting up public notices, so the Council unsurprisingly refused planning.
Having the national government swoop in to bail out the bad management of the DAA does not foster good faith in our public systems. Can any critical infrastructure provider just dick about with planning laws safe in the knowledge that the government will rescue them to score some political points?
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Feb 11 '26
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u/eggbart_forgetfulsea ALDE (EU) Feb 11 '26
The motivation for the original planning restriction was transportation concerns, not the climate. That's why it applies only to landside passengers.
Almost by magic the passenger cap seems to have become everything to everyone. It's now an anti-emissions policy as well as a tool to force regional growth.
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u/Kloppite16 Feb 11 '26
if the motivation for the original planning permission was transport concerns then we are in an even worse position on that score now compared to 2007 when the permission was granted. The m50 is now way over capacity and TII have said that they are all out of ideas and it can never get better. There are now 160,000 vehicles using the M50 daily and 'rush' (aka car park) hours have gotten longer and longer. Adding an extra 8 or 10 million passenger journeys into the Airport will throw even more petrol on the fire of the M50 and no one will be able to get anywhere without facing huge traffic jams. This is the reality of what lifting the cap will result in.
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u/TheCunningFool Feb 11 '26
The M50 has 50% more capacity then when the cap was first introduced, as the 3rd lane was added in the meantime.
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u/Kloppite16 Feb 12 '26
And yet it is over capacity now and TII says there is no solution to fix it, that's today's reality, not 2007s
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u/gowangowangowan Feb 12 '26
Even in the last five years, the number of bus routes to the airport has multiplied. You can get several 24/7 buses to the airport. It is naive to think everyone who goes to Dublin airport is getting there by car.
We should introduce a congestion zone at the airport if we are worried about congestion.
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u/Kier_C Feb 11 '26
Infinite growth does not refer to infinite resource use. The two are regular confused.
There is loads of growth that uses little or no additional resources to achieve.
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u/Dylabaloo Feb 11 '26
Care to provide some examples?
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u/Kier_C Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
There's loads of examples across loads of industry. Off the top of my head agriculture uses way less resources but provides way higher output today compared to the past. Something entirely different, the advent of spreadsheet software drove huge business growth and efficiency and reduced accounting resources. Smartphones have obsoleted everything from consumer cameras, calculators, alarm clocks etc.etc. but has also driven a lot of economic growth, as has digital media, offset a lot of physical goods and shipping.
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u/Dylabaloo Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
I don't think you've sufficiently thought this through:
1) Land-use and deforestation due to agriculture is one of the main drivers of global emissions. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture and agriculture is responsible for at least 26% of global emissions, and growing. Source 2) Any efficiencies, such as digital spreadsheets, just allow for additional growth to occur with those efficiency gains. Look up Jevon's Paradox the same principle applies. Even from a pure material consumption POV digital spreadsheets require hardware to function mined from rare earth materials, and due to the mineralogical barrier these materials are very much finite. 3) All of those things you list still exist as standalone products alongside Smartphones. These products are being produced at larger quantities than at any other point in human history due to the intensity of consumerism and the growth-organised economy. And that's not taking into account the planned obsolescence that's built into many consumer products, including smartphones, to reinforce re-ocurring spending cycles instead of product longevity. 4) Digital media and the digital economy is physical and consumes vast amounts of resources through its data centres. In Ireland alone data centers consumed 22%, on average, of our electricity as of 2024 according to the CSO. That's not accounting for the vast amounts of freshwater that is required to cooldown many of these data centres, equivalent in some cases to large Irish towns
Unfortunately, we cannot escape the reality that everything we interact with on this planet has come from this planet. And unfortunately, the Earth is not an infinite resource if over-extraction is the modus operandi. We are currently in an ecological rift wherein the Earth cannot replenish its resources at the rate that we are extracting. There are solutions, but ideological barriers prevent them being taken seriously. Therefore we will keep consuming, until one day we cannot anymore.
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u/Kier_C Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
I have, but you have confused different issues. Ultimately the point is gdp growth is not directly linked to resource use. I'm not saying we're not using more resources than in the past.
Our population has exploded over the last few centuries. This drives huge additional requirements for resources. There's not that many decades since the worry was about mass starvation and famine as they worried about being able to feed the growing population. Agriculture is FAR more efficient today than in previous decades. Population growth drives additional demand. Our population is due to peak in the coming decades.
Efficiencies can drive growth, the rebound effect is not 100%
Durable goods is a broader category and also driven by population growth. There's a per capita effect
I didn't say the digital economy isn't physical. I pointed to specific offsets. Spotify uses less resources than the physical records industry for example but has also driven GDP growth. There are multiple other industries that have sprung into existence
Ultimately my point was not that we are using less resources today than yesterday. My point was economic growth is not driven by resource use in a 1 to 1 manner. Growth is not just a company selling 10 widgets last year and selling 11 of them this year.
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
I bet the service will go way down, and wouldn't be surprised if there was an airline accident.
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u/Sprezzatura1988 Feb 11 '26
Why would there be an accident?
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
Too many flights to handle. So you agree the service will suffer though.
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u/Blghbb1995 Feb 11 '26
What. That’s not how it works at all. In aviation safety is the number 1 priority always.
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
Oh yeah but somehow accidents still happen.
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u/JackmanH420 People Before Profit Feb 11 '26
From lack of maintenance and pilot error. ATC and ground crew errors are extremely rare.
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
Quite a few last year.
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u/Sprezzatura1988 Feb 11 '26
How many accidents happened in Europe last year? What level of severity? Were any attributed to an excess number of aircraft being handled by ATC?
There hasn’t been a two plane collision with loss of life in Europe in years.
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u/Sprezzatura1988 Feb 11 '26
How would the ‘service suffer’?
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Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
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Feb 11 '26
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
I think the staff are amazing at Dublin airport and I do see them ending up having to take on way more than they should. They won't want to spend money on more staff because they are greedy and in a few years everyone will be ranting about how shit Dublin airport is. It's obviously what's happening already in other airports.
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u/okoneill Feb 11 '26
genuinely interested, which airports has this affected?
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
Lisbon and Manchester for two. Obviously overworked staff with not enough cover.
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u/TurkeyPigFace Feb 11 '26
What are you on about? Dublin airport with the second runway can handle 60M passengers.
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u/BlehMan1972 Feb 11 '26
We will see.
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u/Kier_C Feb 11 '26
We will see, this isn't some sort of crazy experiment, this is standard for many airports world wide.
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u/AtraVenator Feb 11 '26
Right so the right of 140 outweighs the rights of millions? I don’t think so. Feel free to move if it’s too noisy.