One person lodged 23,431 noise complaints about Dublin Airport in 2022
The first flight to use the contraversial North Runway at Dublin Airport on its take off run on August 24, 2022. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin
One individual was responsible for almost 90% of all complaints about noise from aircraft using Dublin Airport last year — filing a daily average of 64 incidents with the airport operator, DAA.
The serial complainant, who had been reporting claims of excessive noise from aircraft taking off and landing at the airport on almost a daily basis since 2019, lodged a total of 23,431 complaints in 2022.
In one month alone — July 2022 — the individual, believed to live in the north-west Dublin suburb of Ongar, made 2,616 complaints to DAA, representing a daily average of 84 incidents of aircraft noise.
New figures published by DAA show 26,196 complaints about noise from aircraft using Dublin Airport were recorded during 2022 — up 93% on the previous year with almost 13,000 additional reports.
While the figures are skewed by the large number of complaints from one individual, there was still an increase in the overall level of complaints by residents which has been linked to a combination of an overall increase in aircraft movements following the easing of restrictions around the Covid-19 pandemic and the opening of the new €320m North Runway.
Excluding reports from the serial complainant, the number of complaints from other members of the public still more than doubled from 1,296 in 2021 to 2,765 last year.
There was also a threefold increase in the number of unique individuals who complained about aircraft noise to DAA during 2022 — some 608 compared to 174 in 2021.
The figures show a spike in the number of people making complaints after the new runway opened in late August, with over 900 cases reported by 192 individuals in September.
The September figures compared to the monthly average last year of 230 complaints being filed by 76 individuals.
Most complaints came from residents of Kinsealy, Portmarnock, Swords, Dunboyne, and Malahide, and related to flights taking off at night.
However, the exact number of complaints relating to aircraft using the North Runway is unclear, as separate figures have still to be collated by DAA.
