RTE Prime Time: DAA’s “Intended Route”
DAA CEO Kenny Jacobs repeatedly told Miriam O’Callaghan on RTE Prime Time that departing aircraft are following “the intended route”. What he didn’t say was intended by whom and when.
DAA was granted planning permission in 2007 to build the north runway. Given the crash in 2008 and its effects on aviation, they delayed construction until 2019, having built a fence and moved a road in 2016 to prevent the 10-year planning permission from expiring. The other thing that happened in 2016 was a “public consultation” to change the routes the departing aircraft would use. It appears these were the intended routes that former Ryanair CMO and current DAA CEO Kenny Jacobs kept mentioning on the Prime Time programme when challenged that DAA has breached its planning permission with every flight that has taken off from the North runway.
Mr Jacobs never answered the question about the DAA’s persistent planning permission breach, instead trotting out the carefully lawyered phrase “intended route”. This is of course was intended to mislead viewers into thinking he was claiming that DAA is in compliance with the planning permission while leaving him able to say that he didn’t actually lie. The current route absolutely is the DAA’s intended route. They’ve intended it at least since 2016.
The problem for the DAA is that while they intended the aircraft to follow this route in 2016, they didn’t when they applied for the planning permisson that was granted in 2007. Back then the Environmental Impact Study and the noise maps were all based on climbing straight ahead for at least 5 nautical miles before turning. Compliance with this is condition 1 of the planning permission. So when Mr Jacobs tells us the planning is complicated, perhaps our timeline can help.
As of 2023 there is exactly one unaltered planning permission in force; the original one granted in 2007 that requires all planes to fly straight ahead for 5 nautical miles. Any deviation from this is in breach of the law.
The logic is fantastic. If you don’t like planning restrictions, just go ahead and build whatever you please and then claim it’s what you intended. Want to put a pig farm next to a housing estate? Get planning permission granted for a barn without mentioning the pigs and put them in once the barn is built. “I always intended to have a pig farm!”
2023 An Bord Pleanála and the "Relevant Action"
Fast forward to 2023 and daa is at it again. Having had their Relevant Action application granted by Fingal County Council, and how that came about is an interesting story, daa had to make a submission to An Bord Pleanála (ABP) with a new Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR). Constitutionally incapable of honesty, daa decided to hide their breach of the 2005 planning permission and hope ABP grants retention of the current flight paths by accident.