Daa's claims about passenger limits harming sustainability goals dubbed 'bizarre'
Airports 7% File Dublin 83% Year, Main Almost All Quarter Second This Flights Ireland's Handled By Five Of While Handled The Handling Flights, In Cork Photo With 74,000 Of Were
Claims that capping passenger numbers from Dublin Airport could adversely affect Ireland's sustainability ambitions have been described as "bizarre in the extreme" by one of Ireland's foremost energy experts.
University College Cork (UCC) professor of sustainable energy, Hannah Daly, said comments from daa chief executive Kenny Jacobs warning against capping passenger numbers for environmental reasons are not backed by any evidence.
The daa, which operates Dublin and Cork Airports, wants the cap of 32 million passengers a year on the country's busiest airport lifted. The cap was a condition of planning permission when Terminal 2 was greenlit 15 years ago.
The daa claims it will have to reduce the number of flights out of Dublin in order to stay within the cap, which it claims will affect the economy and connectivity to and from Ireland.
However, Mr Jacobs also claimed "it will also hurt our sustainability ambitions".
CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB
Prof. Daly said such a claim is "bizarre in the extreme" considering aviation's intense greenhouse gas emissions.
Aviation accounted for 2% of global energy-related CO emissions last year, having grown faster in recent decades than rail, road or shipping, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Following a slowdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, emissions from aviation reached 80% of their pre-pandemic peak last year, the IEA said.
Prof. Daly said: "Aviation is the most carbon-intensive form of transport but its greenhouse gas emissions are effectively unconstrained, as the Government has not put a plan or policies in place to keep the sector in line with a safe climate.
"This claim from the daa chief—that capping passenger numbers threatens the aviation sector’s sustainability goals—is bizarre in the extreme.
Aviation was left out of the so-called carbon budgets assigned to each sector to reduce Ireland’s emissions by 2030, much to the chagrin of environmentalists. Environment and Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has said that aviation was left out of the budgets because flying is an international issue.
According to the most recent data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), in the second quarter of this year, 10.7 million passengers passed through the five main Irish airports, compared with 9.1 million passengers in the same period in 2022 and 10.5 million in 2019.
Almost 74,000 flights were handled by Ireland's five main airports in the second quarter of this year, with Dublin handling 83% of all flights, while Cork handled 7%.
London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick, and Amsterdam-Schiphol were the most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin Airport in the second quarter of the year, while the top route for Cork and Shannon was London-Heathrow, while it was London-Stansted for Knock, and Dublin for Kerry.