Dublin Airport to exceed its passenger cap of 32m passengers

Dublin Airport is to exceed its passenger cap of 32m passengers, as it seeks to raise that limit to 40m people in the coming years. Picture: Colin Keegan/Collins Dublin

Dublin Airport is to exceed its passenger cap of 32m passengers, as it seeks to raise that limit to 40m people in the coming years.

Based on official statistics from Dublin Airport Authority (Daa), the administrative body overseeing Cork and Dublin Airports, some 31.1m travellers had passed through Dublin Airport by the end of November 2023.

While the airport’s official statistics for December have yet to be released to the CSO, a news release from late January stated that 2.3m passengers passed through Dublin Airport in the final month of 2023, a figure that would see the 32m cap breached comprehensively by well over 1m people.

The final official total passenger tally for 2023, once December’s figures are accounted for, is expected to be 33.5m.

However, the Daa news release had said that just 31.9m passengers had used Dublin Airport last year, “in compliance” with the planning cap.

The 32m passenger cap is a source of some controversy given it is seen by some stakeholders as stunting Dublin Airport’s growth in terms of the number of flights it can carry.

Last November the Airport filed a planning application to increase the number of passengers it can handle to 40m.

That application is unlikely to be decided upon before 2025.

Local residents’ groups have argued that given the 32m cap will be breached for 2023, the airport should not have applied for an increase to the cap, but rather should have attempted to secure retention planning permission to legitimise that breach.

On a rolling 12-month basis, going by Daa’s own investor relation statistics, the passenger limit of 32m per year has been breached every month since July of 2023.

A spokesperson for Daa however denied that the cap had been breached for 2023, and said that its numbers “were presented in a transparent manner” last week to demonstrate that compliance.

They said that the 32m cap was first put in place “principally to limit the amount of traffic pressure on the access road infrastructure at Dublin Airport”.

The spokesperson added that the gross passenger figure at the airport “needs to be adjusted” to remove passengers boarding connecting flights, and also those who land on its runways but never disembark before proceeding on their journey, in order “to reach a net figure of passengers who enter both terminals”.

“Given transit passengers do not get off the aircraft and connecting passengers move airside within the terminals at Dublin Airport, they do not impact on surface access,” they said.

In 2018, Daa attempted to have the passenger cap amended within the original planning decision to account for only “origin-destination” passengers, thus removing the need to account for connecting travellers twice.

However, this application was denied by An Bord Pleanála which ruled that to do so would “have material planning consequences and would go beyond what was permitted in the permission granted”.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has expressed his “very strong view” that Dublin’s cap should be raised.

“I think it's important that we invest in our regional airports. Knock, Shannon, Cork, we've been doing that as a government,” he said.

“But we shouldn't forget that Dublin is the main gateway to Ireland."