Council says data from airport body on runway 'inadequate'

Fingal County Council has said additional information supplied by Dublin Airport Authority on plans for a new €130 million runway was "insufficient and inadequate".

In a statement yesterday the council criticised the airport's attempts to address the traffic situation generated by the airport.

The planning authority also said the case for an additional runway had not been sufficiently made.

It argued that the airport authority should have provided a western access point for vehicles using the airport, and that it had failed to evaluate the impact of development with and without a rail link.

In a further criticism of additional information already filed following its planning application, the planners said the airport authority had failed to provide evaluation of alternative access measures to the airport in the event of an emergency on the M1 or M50.

The planners noted that over the last 12 months it has been necessary on occasions to close the southbound carriageway of the M1 and the eastbound carriageway of the M50 for periods of hours due to traffic accidents.

The planners said they also wanted to see a revised junction design, including detailed analysis of the proposed and existing junctions at the western end of the runway.

The airport authority has previously said it needs a new "parallel runway" to provide extra capacity.

Giving evidence to a recent Oireachtas committee, authority director Robert Hilliard warned that unless extra capacity was made available at the airport services might have to be turned away.

He said the airport would reach its capacity by 2008/09.

"If, by that time, additional runway capacity has not been created, there will be a significant and growing shortfall between the runway capacity on the east coast and the demand being created by the airlines," he said.

But in its summation the council concluded that the airport had failed to adequately assess the impact of airport activities on surrounding roads.

The chief planning officer told the airport authority yesterday that "the planning authority considers your response. . .to be insufficient and inadequate".

The council told the airport authority it now wanted:

r a formal forecasting study of airline traffic which should include a brief methodology and a summary of the basic assumptions made;

r additional information on how it is proposed to access the airport from the west;

r a revised traffic-impact assessment, including junction analysis with or without rail;

r an evaluation of alternative access measures to the airport in the event of an emergency on the M1 or M50.

A spokeswoman for Fingal County Council said she expected the deadline for additional information to be about four weeks, after which the council would take additional time before arriving at a decision on the application.

A group of residents from Portmarnock, known as Uproar (United Portmarnock Residents Opposing Another Runway), disagreed fundamentally with the plan in their presentation.

The group has set up a website, www.norunway, to campaign on the issue.