Fingal County Council has decided that the departures over your home are not a planning matter. Ask the Minister one question, in writing: is that his position? And if it is not, will he carry out the independent assessment he promised the Dáil?
Write to the Minister
The letter is one page. Fill in the yellow parts, add a few lines in your own words, and send it.
- The letter in Word, to edit (it also opens in Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice)
- The letter as a PDF, to print and fill in by hand
- Or copy the text at the end of this page into an email
Send it to the Minister for Transport, Darragh O’Brien TD, at darragh.obrien@oireachtas.ie or by post to the address in the letter. Send a copy to your TDs (find them by your address on oireachtas.ie) and your councillors (Fingal County Council).
If you get a reply, we would like to see it: info@dublin-north-runway.com
Hear it for yourself
Ashbourne and Ratoath already live under the north runway’s departures. Two places there let you hear now what is coming to Malahide. Go on a westerly day: a Saturday morning is best. Stay on the road and off the school grounds, and give it half an hour.
Kilcoskan National School, on the R130
What is coming to Malahide Community School. daa’s own noise monitor is at the school.
What is coming to Malahide’s main street: it sits beside the same departures, as Malahide’s centre would sit beside the north runway’s routes.
To hear any street on any day, try the Overhead app. Not sure which way the wind is blowing? Why aircraft take off into the wind.
The letter, to copy into an email
[Your name]
[Your address and Eircode]
[Date]
Darragh O'Brien TD
Minister for Transport
Department of Transport
Leeson Lane, Dublin 2, D02 TR60
Dear Minister,
I live in [Malahide / Portmarnock / Kinsealy / Drinan / Streamstown / Abington]. I am writing about the departure routes from Dublin Airport's north runway over my home, and I ask for your answer in writing by [date].
Fingal County Council has adopted daa's position on those routes. In September it said that flight paths "are not capable of being governed by a planning permission". In October it declared that the departures along those routes are "not development". On that reasoning, daa, a company the State owns, can send departing aircraft over any home in the country, and nobody has a say: not the people underneath, not the Council and not you. Your Department told the Oireachtas that daa is responsible for the routes. daa told your Department that AirNav Ireland is best placed to answer for them.
What keeps departures off my area on easterly days is one planning condition from 2007, which says that the south runway "shall be preferred for departing aircraft". Preferred, not required. From around 2031 the airport will want more departures in its busiest hours than one runway can fly. If departures were then split between the runways by direction, Malahide Community School would be overflown 137 times a day at 65 decibels or louder, and about 26,000 more people would live under departures at that level.
[In your own words: what this would mean for you. Your home, your children's school, your sleep, the value of your house.]
So I have one question. Is it your position that daa can send departures over my home, my children's school and my community, without any assessment, and that this is nobody's business: not yours, not your Department's and not the Council's?
If it is not, please carry out now the independent assessment of flight paths you committed to in the Dáil on 23 June 2026, with terms of reference that include the north runway's easterly routes, before any change in how the runways are used. You told the Dáil: "I live beside the airport. I represent an airport community."
daa wrote to you in August 2026, about lifting the passenger cap: "Under European law, this application cannot be screened in for EIA." The EU Directive itself says that "the Member States may lay down stricter rules to protect the environment". If the answer is that the law allows this, the Government can change the law.
I am sending a copy of this letter to my TDs and councillors.
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]