DAA ‘ultimate’ plan is for 55 million passengers a year through Dublin Airport

Dublin Airport has long-term ambitions to grow its capacity to 55 million passengers a year, according to documents filed with Fingal County Council.
The airport operator, DAA, has filed a dossier of 12,000 pages responding to 85 areas of concern the council raised earlier this year regarding its plan to raise passenger capacity at the airport to 40 million from its current cap of 32 million and make major changes to various parts of the airport.
The original planning application documentation ran to a further 7,000 pages.
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DAA is looking to have the council set aside a 32 million limit on passenger numbers imposed in 2007 as a condition of permission to build a second runway at the airport. That runway came into use in 2022, triggering the cap.
It said 31.9 million people passed through the airport last year. It expects to breach the cap this year and says numbers passing through the airport could hit 35 million in 2025.
“The proposed development for which the applicant now seeks permission has been designed to ensure that it does not compromise the ability of the airport to expand to 55 million passengers per annum throughput at some point in the future,” according to a report by Cork-based Coakley O’Neill Town Planning.
It was responding to the council’s request for additional information on DAA’s plans for 11 separate infrastructure projects at the airport and surrounding area as well as the proposed rise in the passenger cap.
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The 55 million figure is described as the “ultimate” development for the airport.
Alongside the higher passenger cap, DAA is currently looking for permission to demolish a number of the older buildings at the airport, including some hangars, to build new piers and extend others to provide more aircraft stands, boarding gates, ancillary services and a new security clearance area. It also wants permission for an underpass to allow airport traffic taxi under the crosswind runway that connects the airport’s two main runways.
It is also seeking to add 1,871 spaces to the long-term red car park, add two more storeys to the Terminal 2 multistorey car park and build a new 700-space staff car park as well as reconfiguring the public transport access in a new Ground Transportation Centre serviced by a dedicated bus lane. The plan will also involve changes to the junctions on the approach roads to the airport to try to ease access.
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The documents filed by DAA say that increasing capacity to 40 million passengers will involve 69 aircraft movements per hour in and out of the airport at peak times, 14 more than under the current 32 million cap.
It envisages a 30 per cent increase in passengers passing through Terminal 1 at peak hours to 9,655 from 7,400 currently, with a more modest increase at Terminal 2 where peak hour numbers will rise to 5,280 from 4,920 at present, although there will also be a 60 per cent jump in the number of transferring passengers to just shy of 2,200 an hour.
To cope with the higher numbers, DAA plans to construct 20 new boarding gates and provide 29 bays for buses in the new ground transportation centre.
DAA says the infrastructural investment contained in its planning application is required to avoid a “capacity crunch” where “infrastructure will be operationally stretched, the required service levels will not be achievable, resulting in a large proportion of demand being unfulfilled”.
Figures on the economic cost of sticking with the existing 32 million passenger per annum cap rather than expanding operations in line with demand suggest the loss of 17,800 potential jobs across the economy and €1.5 billion in gross value added to the economy by 2030, DAA says, rising to 53,300 jobs and €4.4 billion in lost gross value added by 2055.