Fingal council says it would be hard for it to support DAA car park plans

Fingal County Council has told Dublin airport operator DAA that it would be hard for it to support additional parking for existing airport staff in response to the operator’s plans for a 950-space car park.

As part of pre-planning consultations with the planning authority, the council told the operator that it would be hard to support the planning application “due to recent national policy shifts towards a greater emphasis on public and sustainable transport modes and a shift away from private car use”.

The council said that the staff car park proposal was contrary to some of the development objectives contained in the Fingal development plan and local area plan and that, as a result, the council considered the proposal to be a material contravention of those plans.

In the pre-planning consultations, the planning authority also advised that the justification for the proposed car parking spaces as being replacement parking spaces “was not strong enough to support the proposed quantum of parking”.

In the planning application lodged with the council earlier this month, DAA was seeking planning permission for a westwards extension of the existing Holiday Blue long-term car-park for the additional 950 “airport staff car parking spaces”.

In response to the council concerns at pre-planning stages, the airport operator’s representatives told the council that the proposed car-park was “the minimum number of staff car parking spaces required to meet existing demand”.

The Dublin airport operator stressed that what was proposed was “not additional car parking, but will support existing airport staff car parking, which remains an essential requirement of airport operations”.

The exchanges between the council and the operator were contained in a 32-page planning report lodged with the application by planning consultants Coakley O’Neill acting for the DAA.

In the report, Coakley O’Neill said that over the past decade as Dublin Airport has grown, several locations occupied by airport staff car parks have been consumed by other developments.

The report said that this was predicted to continue to be the case as Dublin airport developed and would “require airport staff parking to be reinstalled elsewhere to cater for this displacement and to help alleviate congestion within the central campus”.

The report added that the loss of airport staff car parking spaces due to displacement was “putting significant pressure on the management of remaining parking assets and airport operations”.