Legislation to end the passenger cap at Dublin Airport passed all stages in the Dáil on Tuesday night and will now go to the Seanad. The Dublin Airport (Passenger Capacity) Bill was passed by 118 votes to 28 and will go before the Seanad next week for further debate. Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien said if the current cap of 32 million was enforced, passenger numbers would decrease by over four million and “you would be losing thousands of jobs in Dublin Airport”. O’Brien said the airport had to “grow in a sustainable way and it will”. The Dublin Fingal East TD also said claims from the Opposition he had not met local residents’ groups was “simply untrue” and that he had “three separate meetings with three groups over the course of the last 12 to 18 months”. The passenger cap was a condition of a 2007 planning permission. The new legislation provides for an environmental impact assessment required under EU law, to be carried out by An Coimisiún Pleanála, in advance of any order to remove the cap.O’Brien said the assessment would be “independently undertaken” by the organisation within a set time frame before making the order. “Any charge that we are setting aside any environmental considerations are absolutely not true,” he said. “I will not prejudice the outcome of that assessment which I will consider fully before making an order. I have made it clear that even though international aviation emissions are outside the scope of the climate action plan which is a fact ... we are taking actions that are aligned with the global approach to decarbonisation in the aviation sector.”A number of Opposition TDs also criticised the lack of time allocated to debate the Bill. Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke said many people understand the passenger cap was “of its time” ... but was “also ignored on an annual basis”. “People can understand the logic of growing the airport in a sustainable way, but they also live with what they would see as essentially an airport and airlines that are given free rein, with complete disregard of their neighbours, responsibilities and obligations that are on individual households and other businesses,” he said. “They wonder why there is a different set of rules for the DAA and several airlines.”Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman referenced comments from Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary that people “knew what they were getting into” when they bought homes near the airport. “People do not have huge choice in where they have a home here right now because of the wider issues in our property market and sometimes people have to buy where the price matches their budget,” said O’Gorman. “If that is somewhere already affected by a high number of flights and that is going to be affected further – especially if the exponential growth permitted by this legislation takes place – that is going to have a major impact on that and it is not acceptable for the owners and beneficiaries of these large airlines to just dismiss people’s very real concerns.”