"Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr. Cock-up?",
to quote Baldrick.
Ah yes, they seem to have done it again. Today's Irish Times carries a report to the effect that the new terminal at Dublin may need to be expanded by as much as 50%, to cater for projected demand.
Now, I can't help recalling, through the mists of time to those halcyon days of ... 2005, when six months was spent back and forth, deciding (!) and undeciding, fretting, backflipping, etc. etc. over the whole terminal issue, that a plan was put in place, which we were told would serve us pretty much indefinitely; we'd have a Terminal 2 and then, if the need arose (which it now seems to?) a Terminal 3. The DAA decided it would build a terminal near the end of Pier C and it developed its plan based on that.
It's given (as has the govt) a commitment to have it open in 2009; now, if it goes messing about with a new design, which presumably will need planning permission (?), and now it comes back to say it need more time. TOUGH! They had their time to put together a plan to meet anticipated growth; they seem to have failed. The govt should take a tough stand on this and insist that planning for T3 go ahead and it should take this as another reason why the DAA should not be allowed to manage the new terminal.
Personally, I think it's time for a "nuclear option" to be considered (and not the one the Dear Leader rejected yesterday):
Take the DAA out of terminal management and confine them to airfield management, i.e. the regulatory side of runnning an airport; they would look after fire services, security, runway lighting, landscaping etc etc and professional terminal operators, with a clearly established track record of growth, marketing and customer service (such as Schiphol, SATS etc) would be brought in to operate (or build/operate) the terminals, paying service charges and rental to the DAA.
The only way you're going to drive home to the DAA that the service it provides and its planning cock-ups are unacceptable is to remove responsibility for these issues from them. They've been warned often enough and this simply isn't good enough. At the risk of stating the "bleeding obvious", we're an island nation and we have a greater need than any other country in Europe for an aggressive, growth orientated and pro-active approach to aviation. It should have happened long before now.