Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary meets Eamon Ryan on Dublin Airport passenger cap after heated exchanges

A meeting between Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary and Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan failed to break the deadlock over a 32-million-a-year limit on passengers travelling through Dublin Airport.

They met on Thursday following weeks of heated exchanges in the media, with Mr O’Leary calling on the Minister to scrap the passenger cap or resign, and Mr Ryan saying that he could not intervene as it is a planning issue.

Mr Ryan said afterwards that the pair continued to differ on the passenger cap, and that he pointed out that a Minister could not simply wade into an issue that was going through the planning process.

Airport operator DAA has applied to Fingal County Council to have the cap increased to 40 million. The planning board, An Bord Pleanála, imposed the limit when it granted permission to Dublin Airport to build the north runway.

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The Minister said the meeting, also attended by Ryanair DAC chief executive Eddie Wilson and the airline group’s director of sustainability, Thomas Fowler, included discussions of the challenge that air travel faced in reaching net zero carbon.

He said that Ryanair’s expertise in this area could be very useful to policymakers.

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In an open letter to the Minister issued after the meeting, Mr O’Leary repeated calls to scrap the 32 million passenger cap, either through a direction to the DAA or by legislation.

He sought a seven-year freeze on the current “excessive” passenger charges at Dublin and asked the Minister to order DAA to axe plans for a €250 million tunnel and to spend the cash on extra boarding gates.

He called for a reintroduction of an incentive scheme offering discounting charges for all growth at the airport for five years for all airlines, similar to the programme DAA operated following the lifting of Covid curbs.

The letter said that if the cap were lifted, Ryanair could grow Irish traffic from its current rate of 20 million a year to 30 million a year by 2030. This would include growing its passengers at Dublin Airport alone to 20 million from 15.7 million.

At the same time, Ryanair could increase its traffic at Cork to 4.5 million from 1.9 million, and at Shannon to three million from 1.9 million, the letter stated.