Dublin Airport cap must be addressed in planning process

The Minister for Tourism has said there is no legal mechanism outside of the planning process to enable the passenger cap at Dublin Airport to be lifted.

Catherine Martin said her Government colleagues, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and Minister of State James Lawless, cannot see a legal mechanism to resolve the issue.

Minister Martin said it is a planning issue and it is not for politicians to interfere with that process.

Speaking to RTÉ News at the Irish Tourism Industry Conference in Dublin, the minister said she is obviously cognisant of how important connectivity is for Ireland as an island and the tourism industry here.

But she said while there are constraints at Dublin Airport, there are not the same constraints in Shannon or Cork.

“Research is pointing to about 38% of visitors when they come to Dublin, land in Dublin, they go west,” she said.

“So I think there is an opportunity here that could be a win-win for regional tourism.”

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The minister said more than 70% of the more than 250,000 people employed in tourism are in the regions.

“So we need to look at really marketing and assisting Shannon and Cork to be seen as destinations,” she added.

The minister said she is also cognisant of the challenges facing the tourism industry and so it is her absolute priority to secure funding in the Budget for supports for the agencies that can support the sector.

She said this could be in the form of increased marketing, product development, resilience, recruitment and digitalisation.

She said a decision on the call for a 9% VAT rate for the hospitality sector is one for the Minister for Finance and while hospitality does not fall under her remit it is a very important part of the tourism ecosystem.

“We did that as a temporary measure during Covid at a cost of €1.2 billion and this is something that the cost to bring it to hospitality, is something that the minister is looking at,” Ms Martin said.

“Of course it is being discussed at Government, but ultimately it is a matter for the Minister for Finance [Jack Chambers].”

But addressing the same conference, Kenny Jacobs, the chief executive of Dublin Airport operator daa, said it was not realistic to think that regional airports could pick up the overflow from the passenger cap in Dublin.

“The whole notion that cap Dublin and it will move to the regions is simplistic, naieve and doesn’t reflect how the airlines work,” he said.

“It also doesn’t reflect how EU open skies and EU regulation works. So that’s naive.

He said the regions should be supported and airlines encouraged to go there.

“But capping Dublin, all you are doing is immediately costing jobs to the Irish economy, you are immediately hurting Irish tourism…and you are giving Irish aviation and Irish tourism a bad look, because it has created this cloud of uncertainty around the place.”

The airports boss said airlines would do what is economically right for themselves.

He acknowledged that daa had been too slow to apply for planning permission to have the passenger cap increased, stating it should have been done “years ago” in around 2018.

“But everybody needs to look in the mirror, we were not the only ones who were aware of the cap,” he claimed.

“This has just moved too slow and we have all ended up with this problem.”

He said he does not think there will be a solution to the problem this year.

Mr Jacobs said getting the cap lifted would come down to the planning system, but planning moves “painfully slowly” in this country and this is the central issue.

Also speaking at the conference, Donal Moriarty, the chief corporate affairs officer at Aer Lingus, said the way out of the situation would be very complex.

He said an interim solution would be for daa to submit an interim planning application for an increase in the cap from 32m to 36m, without any new infrastructure being built.

He added that then needs to be dealt with expeditiously by Fingal County Council and An Bord Pleanála.

Mr Moriarty said the idea of transferring traffic from Dublin Aiport to regional airports does not work from an airline economics perspective or a passenger demand perspective.

“That’s because Dublin Airport is a hub and the component parts of the traffic at Dublin Airport are connecting traffic and point to point traffic,” he later told RTE News.

“It is that combination that enables Dublin Airport to have the capacity that it has and it is simply not possible to transfer that demand elsewhere.”

He added that won’t work as a solution, desribing it as “wishful thinking”.

“It is simply not possible to transfer customer demand, passenger demand, to other airports when it is not there in the first place, that is not going to happen through marketing, or any other mechanisms or any other incentives,” he said.

Tourism activity still 6% below pre-Covid levels – ITIC

Activity in the tourism industry still remains 6% below its pre-Covid levels, two years on from the start of the easing of the pandemic, according to the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC).

It said that while business levels remain subdued, costs have been soaring and claimed the sector needs assistance from the Government in Tuesday’s budget.

“Budget 2025 is very important to the tourism industry and the easiest, most effective and sector-specific way Government can support the industry is a restoration of the 9% VAT rate,” said Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, CEO of ITIC.

Mr O’Mara Walsh added that increased investment is required and that spending reverses in last year’s budget “must be rectified.”

Tourism providers and industry agencies have claimed that the year to date has been challenging for the sector.

Arrivals from the UK are down 12% while recent Fáilte Ireland research has indicated that nearly two thirds of operators expect profitability to be lower this year.

Labour policy changes are also estimated to have added €1.4 billion to the payroll of tourism and hospitality businesses between now and 2026.

The industry is also growing increasingly concerned about the implications of the passenger cap at Dublin Airport.

“We don’t yet know the implications of the passenger cap at Dublin Airport,” said Catherine Flanagan, CEO of the Association of Visitor Experiences and Attractions.

“It is very concerning when we hear that airlines requesting slots for next year are being declined.”