Ryanair, Ireland’s No.1 airline today (28 May) welcomed IAA’s regulatory ruling that Dublin Airport’s price increases do not comply with European regulations. In December 2023, Ryanair submitted a complaint to the IAA regulator highlighting that the daa’s inflation-busting +11% price increase at Dublin Airport for 2024 did not comply with EU pricing regulations, and their fake environmental incentives were nothing but PR waffle.

The IAA has now confirmed the daa failed to deliver an effective environmental scheme to incentivise airlines to grow with quieter, lower CO₂ emission aircraft – despite the daa’s false claims that it would do so. Due to these daa price increases Ryanair was forced to move its 19 greener Gamechanger aircraft out of Dublin to other lower cost EU airports that incentivise growth. Ryanair presented daa with a model from an independent consultancy firm to show how environmental charges could be implemented to achieve reduced CO₂ emissions on new aircraft, while penalising empty flights, yet the daa’s fake environmental scheme completely ignored this advice. 

The daa and Dublin Airport must now scrap their discriminatory price increases and introduce effective environmental charges to incentivise sustainable aviation at Dublin Airport. Transport Minister Eamon Ryan must also act immediately to scrap the 32m traffic cap at Dublin Airport which is blocking growth and driving up air fares.

Ryanair’s Eddie Wilson said:

“We welcome today’s IAA ruling which confirms that the daa’s price increases at Dublin Airport do not comply with EU regulation and must be reviewed. This is the latest daa cock-up having repeatedly failed to plan for security queues, peak summer car parking, or removing the 32m traffic cap, and they have now failed to comply with EU regulations in designing environmental incentives.

This IAA ruling is great news for Irish citizens/visitors who are being forced to pay some of Europe’s highest airport fees at Dublin to fund the daa’s €3bn gold-plated CAPEX programme, which includes unnecessary vanity projects which deliver no benefits for passengers, such as its €250m tunnel to nowhere when its traffic growth is capped.

We call on Transport Minister Eamon Ryan to instruct the daa to immediately scrap their discriminatory price increases and instead focus their efforts  on scrapping the 32m traffic cap before thousands of Irish passengers/visitors are blocked from travelling at the October school mid-term holiday or from coming home for Christmas because of this artificial traffic cap which was imposed in 2007 (almost 20 years ago) because of concerns about road access to Dublin Airport which no longer apply. If the daa had a competent management or a competent Transport Minister, this 32m traffic cap would and should be scrapped to allow Irish tourism to grow and create new jobs while the application to lift this traffic cap is being processed.”