My amendment No. 13 has been grouped with Deputy Ahern's amendment. I will not dwell on it, but the same point I made about the previous Bill also applies in respect of this one, namely the fact that only two hours have been provided for the Committee and Remaining Stages. Detailed issues have to be addressed, including climate, balanced regional development and the significant impact of noise pollution on people who reside in the vicinity of the airport. These are real issues in respect of which there is disagreement. Maybe if we had time to do this at the select committee, we could have found resolutions in respect of a small number of these issues. However, we have been denied the opportunity to do so on foot of the way this Bill is being rushed through the House. Again, this is the only example in this Dáil of a Bill being rammed through on Committee and Remaining Stages. That is not acceptable, and it does not treat appropriately the issues so many TDs from all parties spoke about during pre-legislative scrutiny. Everyone was saying that it is terrible for the residents, that we are listening to them and that we want to help them. When a Bill is banged through the Dáil in two hours, that is neither listening nor a genuine effort to help. My amendment is intended to allow a future Minister to amend the passenger cap for pro-climate reasons. The Bill currently allows the Minister to intervene where the passenger cap is judged to cause serious economic or connectivity harm, but there is no equivalent situation should this Minister or a future Minister believe the number of passengers is causing significant environmental or climate harm. The purpose of my amendment is to recognise that there is a power, but it is a power that can be used in different ways. It recognises that there is a climate issue here. The Bill as drafted recognises one set of risks but not the other. It would be a reasonable compromise for the Minister to accept this amendment. In that case, the Bill would not be pro- or anti-cap; it would simply be future-proofed to allow a Minister to consider climate or environmental considerations in the same way as economic interests. The question of how we deal with the 32 million passenger cap, which was put in as a planning condition initially, is of course central to what we are looking at here. Everybody recognises that flying is essential for an island nation, but how we deal with the situation caused by the 2007 planning application is what is at issue. Last year, just over 36 million passengers went through the airport in breach of the cap. The DAA has brought a planning application using the existing mechanisms in order to bring that up to 40 million. The Minister and his team floated the idea of 60 million passengers going through Dublin Airport in future, which would be equivalent to the numbers JFK Airport saw in 2024 and 2025. That is a huge scale. In this Bill, we are opening the door to any scale of development. It is not a planned or graduated increase; it is the removal of a cap to allow any number of flights to take place. Not even the DAA went that far in the planning application it submitted. That will have climate consequences, which will, no doubt, be addressed in later amendments, but it will also cause significant issues with increased noise in the area of the airport. Later, I will be talking about making reference to the noise abatement objective for Dublin Airport and including that in the Bill as one of the measures to try to provide some degree of reassurance to residents in the area. The committee heard from the likes of Ryanair. In many situations, Michael O’Leary has said that people knew what they were getting into when they bought houses in Swords, Malahide, Hollywoodrath and Dublin 15. That is an outrageous statement. People buy houses where they can afford to buy them. That is the nature of house purchasing in Ireland right now, and some people, if they could afford Kilmartin Grove or Hollywoodrath, chose to live there, whether that is in private purchase, affordable, social, cost-rental or build-to-rent homes. People do not have huge choice in where they have a home here right now because of the wider issues in our property market and sometimes people have to buy where the price matches their budget. That is an area which is already affected by a high number of flights and which is going to be further affected, especially if the exponential growth permitted under this legislation takes place. What is proposed is going to have a major impact, and it is not acceptable for the owners and beneficiaries of these large airlines to just dismiss people’s very real concerns. This impacts my constituency. I have canvassed in the areas to which I refer and have heard the impact of noise on these households. That impact is only going to grow as a result of this Bill.

Sentiment score: 0.08

I was there.

Sentiment score: 0.00

I thank the Minister for his response. I want to come back briefly on two elements. The Minister has said that in advancing this legislation he is not setting aside our climate obligations. Just so it is on the record of the House, section 39 of the Bill is a modification of the application of section 15 of Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. It is worth looking at what that actually does. Section 39 states: The Minister and [An Coimisiún Pleanála], in performing their functions under this Act, shall not be subject to the requirements referred to in section 15(1) of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, having regard to the likely consequences for the economy of the State and for international connectivity if an order is not made by the Minister under section 25(1). The Minister and the commission are not subject to the requirements under section 15(1) of the climate Act. What are those requirements? There are five requirements set out in law. They are that a relevant body shall, insofar as it is practicable, perform its functions in a manner consistent with the most recently approved climate action plan, the most recently approved long-term climate action strategy, the most recently approved national adaptation framework and approved sectoral adaptation plan, the furtherance of the national climate objective and the objective of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change in the State. The word "literally" is overused, but the Minister is literally disapplying climate obligations by means of this particular Bill. Section 39 literally states that, so can we just move away from this idea that the Minister is not doing so. He is, because it says he is in section 39. It is everything from the annual - or what used to be the annual - climate action plans all the way up to the important national climate objective that the State has and that is the centrepiece of the climate action Act, as amended. These are being disapplied when it comes to the crucial decision on lifting the airport cap. They has been disapplied in other areas as well, including in the legislation on the decision relating to LNG that we dealt with earlier. They will possibly be disapplied in relation to many decisions coming through in respect of the critical infrastructure Bill. In some places, what is happening is actually going to make pro-climate critical infrastructure harder to defend in court. I raised that point already. Let us be very clear: the Bill is literally disapplying our climate obligations. That is the purpose of section 39. I wish to comment on the point about the engagement with the process. The Minister mentioned the pre-legislative scrutiny process, which was lengthy. We got to hear in detail the impact of noise on residents and the attempt by certain US CEOs to bully us into making this particular change. We are looking at the detailed legislation at this point. When the ANCA legislation was going through, the Minister made the point that, following engagement with one of his ministerial colleagues, he was able to secure some amendments and improvements.

Sentiment score: 0.12

We cannot do that tonight because we have not even had the opportunity to go through good amendments or to address some of the points in detail. After Committee Stage, most fair-minded Ministers would at least look at what the Opposition has said and make some changes or improvements. We do not have that opportunity here. I have a good amendment for the Minister. It is amendment No. 14. He recognised the work ANCA has done and the fact that it recently published a decision. Let us give that decision some teeth. Let us recognise the noise abatement objective for Dublin Airport in this legislation. Let us recognise that it is one of the considerations that An Coimisiún Pleanála should use in the context of the recommendation it will make and in respect of which the Minister will ultimately make a decision. There are good amendments here. We just do not have the time to tease them out and, perhaps, bring forward other amendments. That is the process. We are helpless in terms of that now. There are good amendments here, and some of them should be accepted.

Sentiment score: 0.11