Fingal Council committee expected to call for removal of Daa board

Daa chairman Basil Geoghegan and Daa CEO Dalton Philips at the opening of the North Runway at Dublin Airport. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography

A local committee on Fingal County Council is expected to call for the removal of the board of Daa after its chairman lobbied for an expedited planning decision on night-time flights at Dublin Airport.

At the first meeting of Fingal County Council since the summer recess, a motion was proposed by independent councillor Cathal Boland calling for the local committee to write to the Government requesting the removal of the Daa board due to its alleged failure “to understand the regulatory requirement under which Dublin Airport is required to operate and also its clear failure to understand the process of planning as it relates to their charge”.

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The motion is expected to pass at the next meeting of the 17 councillors representing Rush/Lusk on Thursday.

The proposal emerged in the fallout from Daa chairman Basil Geoghegan’s recent letter to the Taoiseach, reported previously by the Irish Examiner, which stated that a delayed decision on the night flights by An Bord Pleanála would “have serious consequences for Dublin Airport”.

Mr Geoghegan added that Daa “is not looking for special treatment”.

The planning board's decision in question concerns the potential removal of a planning condition attached to the construction of Dublin Airport’s new north runway, restricting the airport to 65 night-time flights each day once the runway went live.

That condition has consistently been breached since the runway opened in August 2022.

The committee meeting further heard that Fingal County Council is set to contest “all grounds” of a High Court stay granted to Daa and placed on Fingal’s recent enforcement of its own night flights condition.

That enforcement is one of five investigations currently in train regarding the various planning conditions attached to the runway, which was first cleared by the planning board in 2007.

“The council opposes all grounds of challenge advanced at the High Court hearing, which was held on an ex parte basis,” the committee was told. “The council is now preparing its opposition papers."

Locals protest 

Local citizens from across Fingal gathered in the wake of the meeting at the headquarters of the local authority in Swords to protest the ongoing disruption to their lives caused by both the night time flights and the flight paths in use since the new runway opened.

A statement was read to the roughly 200 people present on an evening marred by heavy rain, saying that while the impacts on those gathered are different, “we have a common objective, to ensure that Dublin Airport is operated within the planning permission in place”.

David Walton, a resident of Ballyboughal in north Dublin, described the “incredibly loud, incredibly intrusive” noise from the airport since the opening of the new runway.

“A lot of people are really distraught,” he said. 

They don’t understand how this can happen and how the Daa can use flights that are not in the planning permission.”

Flights from the north runway were expected to fly in a straight line for five nautical miles, per the planning permission handed down by An Bord Pleanála in 2007.

However, when the new runway opened last August, planes began immediately turning after takeoff and flying over a number of rural communities at low altitudes.

Daa initially apologised for that imposition, but new flight paths introduced last February failed to rectify the issue of planes turning at takeoff.