Competition watchdog open to short-term lease on former Quick Park site at Dublin Airport

The Irish competition watchdog has said it would be open to looking at airport operator DAA taking out a short-term lease on an idle car park near Dublin Airport, even after it blocked the authority from acquiring the site with 6,200 spaces earlier this year.

However, a spokesman for DAA responded by signalling that the State-owned company is no longer looking at taking out a short-term lease on the site.

The chairman of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), Brian McHugh, told reporters on Wednesday that the authority “would be very keen to assist in as much as we could” to see a reopening of the car park, if the owner reached a short-term lease agreement as the almost 42-acre site goes through another bidding process.

He spoke as CCPC published a partially-redacted 295-page report on its move in March to prevent a sale of the former Quick Park complex on the Swords Road in Santry to the DAA because it would leave it with a near monopoly on car parking there.

Mr McHugh said that there are “no obvious” competition issues with any of the “multiple parties that are [currently] interested in buying the site” taking out a short-term lease.

“ In terms of DAA, it is possible that they could enter into a short-term lease [and] that there wouldn’t be a competition issue. But it would depend on the details and the circumstances of the arrangements of the contract,” he said.

He clarified that no short-term lease agreement has been put to the CCPC for an assessment. “But we have spoken to the wider parties [interested in the site] to say we are certainly open to a short-term lease,” he said.

The Irish Times reported late last month that Pat Crean of the Marlet Property Group recently made a €70 million-plus bid for the former Quick Park car park, which the airport’s chief executive described as “the best car park in the whole campus”. The site is owned by property developer Gerry Gannon.

Other underbidders from the 2022 sales process, including Euro Car Parks owner David Cullen, and an Irish investment company called Innovest are said to be interested in buying the land.

In a hearing of the Oireachtas’s transport and communications committee last month, Kenny Jacobs, the chief executive of DAA, said that the company DAA had come close to a deal to lease the site from Mr Gannon to operate it for the months of June and July – but that the owner withdrew from that process.

A DAA spokesman suggested on Wednesday the company is no longer interested in revisiting this. “We’ve moved on and at this stage just want to see the facility reopened and the spaces available to passengers once again – and a commitment from any new owner that it will remain as a car park long term,” he said.

The CCPC said that had DAA bought the former Quick Park site, it would have left it with a 90 per cent share of car parking spaces at or near Dublin Airport, with the remaining 10 per cent in the hands of a number of hotels.

The commission said that DAA buying the land would have resulted “in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to the market for the provision of car parking spaces to the public in the vicinity of Dublin Airport”.