Madam, - I beg to disagree with Emmet Oliver's article entitled "Dublin airport too weak to pay Cork's debt" (The Irish Times, March 9th). The Dublin Airport Authority has vast land resources, which it plans to bury under an uneconomic new parallel runway.
Consultants for the DAA considered the option of improving the existing northern runway (11/29), but argued that in order to extend 11/29 the DAA would need to purchase an additional 116 acres of land outside existing airport boundaries. They advanced the cost of acquiring this land as a reason to reject the option.
In doing so they completely ignored the value of the land to be built on by the new runway - effectively valuing it at zero, and ignoring the value of the land that would be released by choosing the option to improve 11/29.
Most of the publicly-owned land destined for the new parallel runway is situated to the west of 11/29 and could be disposed of without interfering with the operation of an expanded airport with an improved 11/29. Perhaps some 600 acres could be freed.
Had the real value of this land been taken into account, the option to improve 11/29 would not have been so casually dismissed.
In extending 11/29, the DAA would be better off to the extent of some 500 acres, worth about €1 billion. Such a sum would pay for the improved runway, pay off Cork Airport's debt and the DAA's pension fund deficit, and leave some over to build the new terminal, with no extra cost to airline passengers in increased charges at either Cork or Dublin. - Yours, etc,
MATTHEW HARLEY,
Portmarnock,
Co Dublin.