FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL has issued an enforcement order to the DAA giving it a two year period to comply with its planning conditions as it has breached the 32 million annual passenger cap for Dublin Airport. 

A spokesperson for the council said that this gives the DAA an opportunity to progress their “planning applications to increase passenger capacity at Dublin Airport or take such other steps as they consider appropriate to achieve compliance”. 

The council received complaints that Dublin Airport had breached its annual passenger cap in 2023 and 2024 and launched a formal investigation. 

A warning letter was issued to the DAA previously. 

A spokesperson for the DAA said that passenger numbers for the airport will be north of 36 million this year and will be heading towards 40 million by the end of the decade. 

They said the enforcement order is a “sorry indictment of the mess that is the Irish planning system, particularly when it comes to the most vital piece of transport infrastructure on this island”. 

The DAA called for the system to be overhauled immediately. 

“Our national airport is hamstrung and can’t get on with its mandate to grow Ireland’s connectivity. The passenger cap on Dublin Airport needs to be removed once and for all,” the organisation said. 

The DAA further said that the current Government committed to acting speedily when it took up office to bring forward a legislative solution to the passenger cap. 

The residents group Residents at Dublin Airport accused the airport authority of acting with “arrogance” and “thumbing its nose at the planning process while demanding the Government facilitate what amounts to unrestricted air passenger numbers”. 

Spokesperson Liam O Gradaigh said: “The airport authority is obliged to provide noise pollution data to the noise regulator, ANCA, in support of its application for 40 million passengers. That request was made in March last year and daa has still not provided the information required by the regulator.” 

“Instead, they have demanded that the planning process for sustainable passenger numbers at the airport be stripped from the local authority and given to some national quango. That is the policy of Heads I win, Tails you lose,” he added.