The airline chief demanded that Transport Minister Eamon Ryan order the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) to authorise additional landing and take-off slots at Dublin Airport this winter. The IAA has capped capacity at the airport at 14.4 million passengers for the period from October to March.
However Mr Lawless said he was “not convinced” the demand from Mr O’Leary “is a runner”.
“There’s a legal and planning dimension to it,” he said. “I don’t think that we can get a one size fits all quick solution here.”
Mr Lawless said that while he wants to ultimately see passenger numbers grow at Dublin Airport, it is credible in the meantime that growth that cannot be accommodated in Dublin be shifted to regional airports.
Most airlines say they want the bulk of their operations to be in and out of the capital, however, due to strong passenger traffic flows and the critical mass of population that makes services in and out of the country viable.
The passenger cap at Dublin Airport was introduced in 2007 as a planning condition attached to the construction of the airport’s second terminal.
Mr O’Leary said the cap – including the restriction on winter flights – threatens ad hoc services such as flights for rugby fans travelling to matches and festive trips to Lapland.
“We need a solution to this that allows the Leinster rugby matches to go ahead, that allows the Christmas extras to come to Dublin and not to go to Belfast, that allows the rugby internationals next spring, that allows the Cheltenham flights to operate,” he said.
“There are real daily challenges being posed by this,” he insisted. “All of this is solvable if Eamon Ryan simply issues a directive to the IAA to issue these additional slots this winter and next summer while the planning process plays itself out.”
The DAA said last week that it expects to breach the passenger cap this year, with Dublin Airport handling 33 million passengers during 2024.
The agency has applied to Fingal County Council for an increase in the annual cap to 40 million as part of a wider €2bn-plus infrastructure development. The application could take another two years to be ruled on.
The airport could have handled 35 million passengers this year if growth hadn’t been throttled, according to DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs. Next year, it could have been a 37-million-passenger airport, he said last week.
“Ultimately, the solution to the cap at Dublin Airport is for the planning process to come to a decision and do that quickly,” said Minister Lawless. “It’s my preferred outcome that the cap would be lifted. In the interim, we need to mitigate that, and we need to look at ways we can do that.”