Speaking quietly in a city office block, DAA chairman Basil Geoghegan accepts the airport operator is confronted by “a serious amount of treacle that we need to get through”. But he also makes the case for eliminating drama from the running of Ireland’s main aviation hub.
“I would like us to take the airport off the front page and just have it being a straightforward utility, offering a good service at a good price and being able to pay nice dividends back to the State so that they can invest them in other parts,” he says.
No chance. Always one of most politicised semi-State companies, DAA is in the wars over a 32 million annual passenger cap that will be breached in coming weeks. Geoghegan says Dublin Airport could accommodate up to 36 million passengers without radical infrastructure change but there is no leeway.
“There will be a position where we are not compliant,” he adds.
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A former Goldman Sachs banker, Geoghegan is now a partner at US bank PJT Partners. Previously on the board of the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), he also advised Bertie Ahern’s government on the 2006 flotation of Aer Lingus. He was appointed DAA chairman by then minister for transport Shane Ross in 2018 and reappointed by the current Minister, Eamon Ryan, in 2021.
Does Ryan grasp the urgency of issues facing DAA? “I think everyone sees the urgency of the situation. But I’m not sure that many are prepared to act to try and improve the urgency of the situation,” Geoghegan says.
“It’s too easy to personify these things. I think I have a pretty good relationship with Minister Ryan. I have tonnes of respect for him. But there’s an organisation that’s been there for a long time. Everybody needs to work together to solve things. That should be the great thing about being a small country – I think it’s just missing at the moment.”
Asked whether the initiative to settle the row over the cap might come from higher up within Government, he notes the possibility of US airlines challenging Irish flight restrictions. At issue is the EU-US Open Skies agreement that opens all transatlantic routes to American and EU airlines.
“Ultimately I think that the potential conflict with European laws and Open Skies – and the importance of [foreign direct investment] to Ireland and the fact that we’re an island will mean that this will go up the agenda of importance. I only wish it had previously but not for lack of trying.”
‘Fault is something that people can take their own view of’
The cap has already led the DAA into conflict with the Government, regulators and airlines, all while it tries to advance a mammoth Fingal County Council planning application that would boost annual capacity to 40 million. With Fingal nowhere near a decision, the row is destined for the High Court as DAA and airlines contest IAA cuts to landing slots.
If that was not enough, Minister for Tourism Catherine Martin has practically blamed daa for not moving sooner to submit its application of last December to Fingal.
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Geoghegan says it is not as simple as that, noting that DAA first applied in 2019 to raise the cap but this was stalled by delays over noise regulation that have yet to be definitively by settled by An Bord Pleanála. A recent draft ruling from the planning appeals body to restrict night-time flights was criticised as a “backward step” by DAA.
“It’s not our fault for applying on time because we applied five years ago,” he says. “The reason we applied five years ago and it couldn’t happen was because of decisions that were taken prior to that.”
One critical decision was the fact that Dublin Airport was no longer classed as strategic infrastructure, meaning DAA cannot bypass Fingal and go directly to An Bord Pleanála. The company asked Ministers to reclassify the airport as strategic infrastructure in new planning laws, but was spurned. Geoghegan sees this as an opportunity lost. “We have the same locus standi in planning as you when you are extending your house.”
Another point of friction was the belated establishment of the Aircraft Noise Competent Authority, an independent regulator within Fingal County Council, originally destined to be part of the IAA.
“All of these things have consequences – and there are consequences of taking mediocre decisions as opposed to really good decisions. But unfortunately in the world of infrastructure you sometimes only find out these consequences down the line,” he says.
So, is Catherine Martin wrong to say it’s DAA’s fault for not applying sooner?
“Fault is something that people can take their own view of,” Geoghegan says. “But I am telling you that we applied to do this five years ago. But we applied into a system that was already very complicated and probably far more complicated than even the architects of the system thought at the time.”
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