Dublin Airport's operator DAA will have to live within planning conditions, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said in reaction to reports that the passenger cap will be breached.
The cap has been in existence going back to 2007, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show. “They (DAA) are looking to have it raised and that's a matter for the planning authorities. They have an application in with Fingal County Council for the development of the airport, but also to raise the cap. And in the interim, they have to abide by planning conditions.”
It would be chaos if there was a decision not to abide by the law, he warned. “It would be a free for all.”
Mr Ryan said he agreed with comments made earlier by DAA’s Kenny Jacobs that the airport would have acted quicker, but also that the current planning and legal system was not serving the public good in terms of the speed of decisions or the ability to get things built in many instances.
Ireland had an "incredibly litigious, expensive" planning and legal system that did not always benefit the public good.
The Minister said that his department knew that the passenger numbers at Dublin Airport were “at the very edge of the existing cap” and that the issue needed to be addressed, but that had to be done through the planning system.
“Now, I've been getting a lot of abuse from the likes of Michael O'Leary and others saying, oh, all you have to do, minister, is you just have to step in and address it and click your fingers and all will be solved. That's not possible. That's not true. That's not within the law.
"And unless you want to throw out the Irish Constitution, throw out the Irish legal system and start having ministers running by diktat, then that's the way you go. But that's not how this country works. We are a democratic constitutional republic. We live within the law, all of us.”
Such suggestions were “false nonsense,” he said. “Don't put out false flag. Like, why are you pitching it in a way that all this takes is a political decision from the minister. And if it wasn't for that, we'd be fine. That's not true. And that's not accurate. And that's not within the law.”
