Cost-benefit analysis needed for Dublin Airport

The new NDP 2007-2013 envisages spending €1.bn on infrastructure at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. At Dublin Airport this includes extending Terminal 1, a new Terminal 2 and a new runway.

Finance Minister Brian Cowen says all projects in the new NDP costing over €3m must be subjected to a full cost-benefit analysis. This should already have been done under existing Department of Finance guidelines for Dublin Airport's planned capital expenditure programme. Alternatives should also have been seriously evaluated. The Dublin Airport Authority admitted at An Bord Pleanála last October that this analysis had not been done.

Portmarnock Community Association did its own cost benefit analysis. (See www.norunway.com/t2a/appt2.htm) We found that Dublin Airport's expansion plan will waste €4.bn while an unsubsidised second airport, built on a greenfield site serving the Greater Dublin Area, would yield a real annual return of 7.4%, plus spin-off benefits like jobs where most needed.

A major factor in this result is the value of public and private land in and around Dublin Airport. This land, to be consumed by the expansion plan, is worth about €2 million per acre, while thousands of hectares of low-value cutaway bogland are available within 50 km of Dublin City. This relative cost was ignored by the DAA, as were relative road congestion costs. The DAA intends to treble passenger numbers to 60 million per year, creating six times the IKEA car-load the NRA has objected to, bringing gridlock to the upgraded M1-M50 and blocking access to the airport itself, at huge economic cost.

If the Government's commitment to “Value for Money” is not just pre-election spin, Dublin Airport's expansion plan will immediately be subjected to “a full cost benefit analysis” and the “robust and transparent appraisal, management and monitoring systems” the NDP promises.

Matthew Harley, Portmarnock, Co Dublin