The passenger cap at Dublin Airport will be removed "at a point in time", the head of DAA has said.
A number of destinations out of Dublin Airport have been cancelled this winter due to the passenger cap.
Among the destinations which will not operate until March include Crete and US cities Dallas and Charlotte.
The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has limited available slots at Dublin Airport in a bid to prevent it from exceeding a 32 million passenger cap.
DAA CEO Kenny Jacobs told The Hard Shoulder the cap will be removed at some point.
"It will get removed at a point in time through planning," he said.
"We will go through a very robust and open planning process - regrettably - a slow planning process in Ireland to do that.
"Everybody will have their say on what they would like to happen".
'More pain in the summer'
Mr Jacobs said the "pain" of slots being removed at Dublin Airport will be ongoing for passengers.
"It starts this winter, it will go through to next summer and continue next winter until the cap is removed," he said.
"This is when it happens to start - there isn't an issue about spreading it out.
"There will be more pain felt in the summer of 2025 than this winter - you will see airlines being much more vocal".
Mr Jacobs said that airfares "are up already" as a result.
"The price of tickets has gone up - it will go up further and you'll feel it more in the summer," he said
"You won't have specials, you won't have seat sales like you have from the airlines today.
"A couple of routes that Dublin is connected with today have already fallen off and more will fall off."
Loss of jobs
Mr Jacobs said the cap "is not good news" for the public as "fares will go up, it means choice will go down [and] Ireland won't be as connected".
"It's going to cost about 1,000 aviation jobs at the airport next year," he said.
"We estimate it's going to be somewhere between a €500m and €750m hit to Irish tourism.
"There's nothing good about the cap - we will comply with it until we replace it but it is going to do economic damage to Ireland".
'An outdated condition'
Mr Jacobs said the 16-year-old passenger cap needs to be updated.
"It was a condition attached to the construction of Terminal 2, it was a condition attached when traffic congestion on the roads to Dublin Airport was in a very different place," he said.
"It was a condition that was attached when the population of Ireland was four million - today it's 5.5 million.
"It's an outdated condition, it's still a condition that we're doing everything we can to comply with."
Mr Jacobs said "about 6% less passengers" will be accommodated at Dublin Airport because of the reduction in winter slots.
"That means that airlines are now making choices in terms of how they'll use slots - so there are reductions being made," he said.
"Reductions in Christmas specials [and] reductions in just the frequencies that you have."
He added that the change means a number of "particular destinations" are not connected with the capital.
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