Dublin Airport (Passenger Capacity) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

I thank the Minister for his very comprehensive response to the many points made. As Deputy O'Gorman said, we have to be accurate in what we say. This legislation is exempt from section 15 of the climate action Act. It is of critical importance to acknowledge that in the first instance. Otherwise, we are beating around the bush and being quite disingenuous. Speaking of being disingenuous, we should not be dangling the prospect of 4,000 jobs being impacted during the debate on legislation of this nature. I do not think it is accurate to speak about this matter in that context. The Minister has insight from meeting with the DAA and everybody else involved, but, given the tight timeframe, to make a threat of that nature in respect of legislation does not help.
I listened with real interest to a DAA spokesperson commenting on balanced regional development and the importance of other regional airports. He said that airlines simply do not want to use the other airports and that is why the passenger cap needs to go. In that context, I reiterate the point I made in my initial contribution. This is legislation and the policy behind it are being driven by the market. The cost of that is yet to be determined.
The Minister reverted to me about the SHD legislation and how it differs from this Bill. On the face of it, however, it is undemocratic to bypass the local authority in the first instance. The Minister referred to the strategic importance of this piece of infrastructure. When he was a councillor - I was also a councillor in Kildare - he would not have been impressed by the idea that the local authority of which he was a member, in the context of the important function it plays in respect of the planning process, would be bypassed. I have a very fond memory of a colleague of the Minister's who served with me on Kildare County Council declaring a climate emergency. He put down a motion at a meeting of Kildare County Council, banged on the table and stated that we were in a climate emergency and living in that dystopian future that we were told to worry about when it came to severe weather events. That colleague of the Minister is now going to vote in favour of legislation, the consequences of which we simply cannot know because no calculation has been carried out. There is no sense from a numbers perspective what impact this legislation will have. The Minister cannot rebut that because it is factually correct. We have not done the assessment. We have not done the holistic calculation of just how damaging this will be.
There was a situation in Kildare about a month ago whereby the ESB threatened that it was going to flood one community because of excess water in the River Liffey. At the same time, another community 3 km or 4 km away had no water. That is testament to the ever-worsening and ever-more-extreme climate events our country faces and to our place in this world.
It pains me when colleagues declare that we are in a climate emergency at local authority meetings and then the Government bypasses local authorities with its decision-making structures. I wonder what will happen next. What other ministerial powers are going to come about? When we are talking about nuclear energy or other important projects, will it be okay to be undemocratic and not to put these through the formal planning process because of their strategic importance? I am worried. If we get that precedent wrong, it will be the start of a very worrying trend.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30