 He joined DAA in January 2013 from Glambia, where he was CEO and President of Glambia USA and Global Nutritionals from 2005 to 2012. Before joining Glambia, he held a number of senior management positions with Coca-Cola in Russia and with Grand Met in Ireland and Central Europe. He's a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants and holds a diploma in Applied Finance from the Irish Management Institute. He's also a Director of ACI Europe and the Irish Business Group, IBEC and a Non-Executive Director and Member of the Board of Total Produce. So Kevin is going to outline to us today his strategic vision for the future for both his own company and indeed putting it in a wider context. Perspective for me, four years into the job of aviation in Ireland and how it matters and what difference it makes. Thirdly, just to give you my take on the challenges we see as a business today, good and bad like any business. Then I'll move through Dublin Airport in a bit of detail, what we're doing to drive and develop the business and then I'll move on to the new Northern Runway Project and take you through that and why it's so crucially important to the country as well as our business. Firstly, the DEA, we're owned by the government, obviously. We're what they call a commercial semi-state which means we have to make our own investments, we have to find our own money and the company is run entirely as a commercial entity. Has been since 1999 when we first started paying rates. Walking through the different bits of the group, we have four or five businesses within it. Our newest business is DEA International which operates internationally in airport management contracts. We won a major contract last year in Saudi Arabia to operate the new terminal in Riyadh on behalf of the Saudi government. To put that into context, it's about half the size of Dublin Airport which has started up and is operating very, very successfully over the last six months. Our second business is ARI which is the old ARI International which is duty free. It's across around 15 countries at the moment and has been winning new business around the world over the last number of years with new shops due to open over the next 24 months in Muscat in Oman, Abu Dhabi in the new state of the art terminal and in Jakarta in Indonesia. Our next business is Cork Airport which is the second largest airport on the island with over 2 million passengers and was the second fastest growing behind Dublin Airport last year up 8%. We've got really strong growth momentum particularly as the economy picks up and we've driven a lot more inbound tourism to Cork and the south of Ireland and we have a very exciting issue with direct and indirect connectivity to North America with both wow through Iceland and Norwegian now that we've won a long-standing battle to get a license to fly directly from Cork to North America. Obviously Dublin, I'll come on to that in a moment. Overall the group is about 2 billion of assets overall about 6,000 people, 3,000 in Ireland, 3,000 abroad, primarily in our retail businesses across the world. We made a little over 206 million of EBITDA last year and our return on capital employed is about 7%. We're regulated, I see Adrian here today is from our regulator and I'd have to say we're one of the heaviest regulated airports in Europe along with Heathrow but that is what it is and I complain about it a lot but it doesn't get me very far. Moving for a moment just to the aviation sector, I think it's a terrific sector. We obviously live in an island and we have a far higher propensity to travel than our neighbours in the UK and in Europe we travel four times more by air than Europeans twice as much as people living in the UK but aviation matters in this economy not only is it a key industry all on its own we're absolutely privileged to have a number of very very strong airlines based here particularly Ryanair and Erlingus but also a key home to the aircraft leasing industry, a key home for talent for aviation globally I think the government has recognised that and also recognised the very special role quite uniquely of governments across Europe that aviation has in creating economic impact and developing the economy so it developed a very progressive national aviation policy a number of years ago in which enshrined Dublin's role in providing essential infrastructure which is one of our key challenges as well as running the company successfully financially bringing on the new runway on a timely basis and building Dublin as a hub to North America as we stand back at the beginning of 2017 and look at our business and look at the environment we operate in it's worth just summing up the sort of four or five key challenges good and bad that we see clearly the Irish economy has been a great star over the last year in particular it looks very strong again this year I think we would see some concerns in terms of rising costs, competitiveness also some of the fragility given the political system not just here but across Europe and the US secondly the oil price has been very good to our customers and therefore to us over the last two years it's now started to go back up again up around 56 dollars which is good because our customers have made more money they bought more planes they've reduced their prices and it's helped our business to grow and develop thirdly is terrorism the terrible terrorist attacks particularly across Europe over the last 18 months have had an impact I think if you look at the tourism industry in Egypt, Turkey, North Africa it's been decimated airports are both a target as we saw terribly over the last year most Istanbul and in Brussels and also there's a bigger issue which is it actually reduces underlying inclination to travel if you looked in Paris last summer there was a big step back in long haul business coming from Asia they just went somewhere else they felt it was safer so I think that's a big key negative factor at play at the moment fourthly the airline cycle it's a cyclical business they've been doing well for the last couple of years and when that turns and what it means is a factor we have to consider and lastly Brexit which we think is very very negative as a small island nation parked on the edge of Europe I think it's critically important that we stay open we stay able to trade with everyone and we stay able to keep the advantages that we have at the moment and we'd be quite concerned where things are and how it's all going to pan out there's now a very modern leading category one European airport last year we did nearly 28 million passengers we grew by 11% that made us the fastest growing major airport in Europe last year and we're the second fastest in the two previous years we're now up to number 12 I think in the airports within mainland Europe just behind Copenhagen and we passed out Zurich in the course of the year we enjoy as many of you would know the single busiest city pair route in Europe in Dublin London clearly Brexit will be a question for there how that continues and we've a very privileged position to be in the number five gateway to North America which we've been working very hard with all our customers to establish over the last number of years we've a very deep route network particularly into the UK provincial cities and right into Europe particularly benefiting from right now being based here and they're a very very extensive route network we work very hard on our primary customers who are the airlines and last year we were proud to be the number one in airports of our size over 25 million winner of the Roots Award which is the best airport in the customer's opinion we also work very hard on our passengers and for the last eight quarters we've been in the top five on the hard metrics measured right across all airports across Europe if you went back five or six years we would have been in the bottom five of the top 30 airports and we've been paying a lot of attention particularly to developing Dublin's a gateway and our long-haul route network 20 years ago we had four long-haul routes last summer we had 20 all that growth is very good very welcome in the recession we went down to 18 and a half million passengers we're now back up to 28 but like any growth company that produces lots of pain some of the key pieces of pain for us is how we develop our infrastructure to cope with that growth we think of the business as a factory so we look at each part of that factory each part of the day try to bring on enough capacity to meet our customers needs on a timely basis we've quietly been expanding the infrastructure over the last number of years essentially rebuilding terminal one very carefully if you think from the car park through security expanding security the shops just before Christmas a new arrivals area and we're also working through this year the actual departures area so terminal one will feel and look like a brand new terminal by the time we're finished later this year and there's a reason for that to be able to persuade our customers and passengers to be very very happy in using it terminal two we've also been adding capacity on the car park side on the security side and particularly over the last 12 months our key constraints have been airside we've been bringing on more stands places to park airplanes and you'll see more of that happening this year and you'll also see more remote periods you see more busing and you see some expansions on the actual airside but of course the big challenge we're facing is now on the runway side where we actually communicated last April that we're moving forward with a new our third runway our northern parallel runway and i'll talk about that a little bit more i suppose maybe just standing back for a moment and saying why what's the need and why now the need is because our core role and the key reason we're on the planet is actually to provide the central infrastructure to let this country operate and to help support develop the economy whether that's for tourism which is a prime industry whether it's foreign direct investment that we have so much of and value so much whether it's for irish trade that is increasingly going international that's our core purpose to actually help support that and drive it and make this a better economy if you look at the actual scale of the numbers we did a economic impact study about 18 months ago and there's about a hundred thousand jobs directly associated with Dublin airport which about 15 000 are directly on our campus that's about seven billion of GDP which is about four percent of the national GDP as we bring on the new runway that will create about 1200 jobs through the life of the project there'll be about 7 000 jobs by the mid 2020s when we're up and fully running and there'll be about 31 000 jobs when we're complete at full capacity a long time down the road in the future the issue of why now is a runway is a primary piece of infrastructure you can't bring on a piece of a runway like you can bring on other pieces of infrastructure and we're essentially full for a number of key times during the day we're about 87 percent capacity in total between five in the morning and midnight next summer in 17 and we're going to be absolutely full for departures and some key hours and arrival in other hours so i think that's the reason it's so important and why we've actually got to move now and as quickly as possible Dublin airport and the runway system we have in the infrastructure we have is a great example of really truly strategic long-term planning in this country it was opened originally in 1940 if you look back at the maps at that time you can see the runway and the airside maps show pretty much what we have today in the late 1960s in fact in my office i have a map on the wall from 1968 which shows the runways we have today and sketched on to it where the new northern parallel runway will be at that time my predecessors took active steps to actually procure land assemble the land bank and the planners both in north county dublin fingles predecessors and nationally put in place a set of planning guidelines and a framework to preserve the area around north county dublin even to the point of putting the southern runway in place first of the extensions in 1989 which essentially put a firewall with the city and putting in place sort of the green areas either side west and east of the airport i think that's been a huge success factor and one of the reasons that we've been able to develop and are able to continue developing so quickly i think it's interesting if you look at Heathrow for example where they're going to have to knock villages they're going to have to knock suburbs to build the runway our new runway will all be built on our own land bank if you look at the relative impact in terms of on the population the number of houses impacted by say a key daytime metric in Heathrow there are 46,000 odd houses impacted in Dublin airport 250 i suppose the unfortunate corollary of that is that for people living locally they say we live in a wonderful green zone so near the city and they do but that green zone so near the city has been put in place and kept that way waiting for the development of Dublin airport to be able to provide the economy with the infrastructure it needs we went through the planning process in the 2000s planning was granted in 2007 with 31 conditions i'll come on to some of those in a few moments and the project on 40 was put in hold through the recession when our passenger numbers crashed and there was neither the need nor did the company have the financial capacity to bring the project forward i suppose looking across at what we're doing and how we're doing it it's going to be a 3.1 kilometer runway it's a bit a mile north of the existing runway it's longer than the existing runway because we've got to make sure that Ireland is able to connect further to the rest of the world particularly important if you think of what's happening not just Brexit but if you think of in America and the way that a lot of parts of the world are becoming more independent and isolated we've designed it to make sure it reflects and is able to support the needs of our customers and if you look at our customers and their business models there are three key needs we've got short-haul customers and we have around 74 planes that are based in Dublin airport we benefit from Ryanair, Erlingas, Erlingas Regional, Norwegian and CityJet having base planes in the main and the key thing in the short-haul business is you're able to get up first thing in the morning get your plane out get plenty of turns during the day and get home at night secondly on the long-haul we are a small piece of a global system we've been very successful not just in building business to North America but also building business from the Middle East and what's critically important is that we're able to fit into the flight patterns coming from those parts of the world where essentially flights arrive in the main early in the morning through to late morning and leave late morning to mid-afternoon to be able to connect with connecting waves elsewhere be that in the Middle East or in North America and then thirdly on the transfer side we've been building Dublin not just as a gateway and one of the largest points of embarkation to North America but very much as a connection point to parts of Europe and into the UK and one in five of our passengers last year were actually not coming to or from Dublin but to somewhere else and that's really important for our business and making it more resilient to be able to cope with downturns in the Irish economy also make sure that our long-haul route network if you think one in five of those passengers are going somewhere else it means there's a stronger chance of Dublin having a long-haul route and our airline customers having better economics. Cost of the runway is anticipated to be around 320 million that compares with a cost say for example in Heathrow of around 8 billion and is extraordinary value for money if you look at what we get and what they'll get which is on the runway side there's lots of other different pieces of the equation but like for like we're massively cheaper. If you look at our position today there's absolutely no restrictions on our business and nor should there be we have two conditions that are usually problematic in the planning that we got in 2007 and we intend to look to have those conditions removed one of which relates to use of the new runway at night between 11 at night and 7 in the morning as I said earlier we're actually totally full at a number of key times including first thing in the morning it's like putting an extra lane on the m50 because you're congested and saying you can't use it until after rush hour so we think that's actually is plainly wrong and needs to be changed the second is a constraint on nighttime flying on the total airport not just on the new runway which constrains the number of flights to 65 from 11 at night until 7 in the morning right now we've about 100 flights at night through that time period and that's been one of the key factors that let us develop Dublin airport so well over the last number of years is building the long haul business which tends to come in early in the morning through to mid-morning you might ask what's the impact if we didn't deal with those it would be horrific firstly the day we open the runway we would lose about three million passengers that clearly would not make any sense by the time we get to 2037 we'd have lost around six or seven million passengers a year so a total of 80 million passengers would be lost to this island and clearly that would also have the impact of pushing up the price to our customers and probably pushing up higher affairs and reducing the connectivity that we'd be able to provide which I think would be a huge disaster if you think we're moving into a time when the world is getting smaller we need to be more independent we need to forge strong trade business tourism links with other parts and being constrained in that way essentially constrains the entire economy so we think that doesn't it's not a good thing moving through to how we've been working through this I think there's a general agreement on the need for a new runway we announced that we're moving forward with the project last April clearly there's a huge impact on people living nearby particularly those people that live nearest to where the new runway is actually going to be and so we've been working very closely with them and all of the stakeholders both formally and informally in terms of engaging consultation and a process of formal consultation as we have gone through the last eight months I suppose the on the individual side we have been working through the preconditions that we got in 2007 we've put in place a voluntary house buyout scheme there are no compulsory purchase orders we've tried to construct it in a way that gives people as much choice and as much flexibility of deciding what works for them in the future after the new runways opened we've established that I'm putting in place a house insulation scheme community gains we're also looking and taking input from our key stakeholders locally on other issues that they face and work on our way through the analysis of those issues and what if any mitigation we can put in place with an idea of putting in an EIS over the course of the next number of months so that we can actually go to change those conditions there's a new directive from Europe section 598 which looks at noise which is what the two conditions relate to it basically says in simple terms of four things need to be considered one land use and planning secondly the type of aircraft that you have in an airport thirdly the amount of noise and the mitigation and then determine is there a noise issue or not and only then determined if any restriction is warranted we believe going through those factors that does not we think we're very very proactive land use and planning and to be put in place a long time before me on the aircraft noise type 95 percent of the planes using Dublin airport or the quietest type we have a variety of procedures in place with both the airlines and the air traffic control people in terms of minimizing the amount of noise how planes approach how they come into land how they break how they start up their engines how they take off how they leave flight paths to actually look on an overall basis how we minimize the impact on people living nearby we also as described earlier have a range of mitigations of where there is noise and clearly there is if you're near the end of a runway that actually mitigates and reduces that noise and we think we've a very very strong case in that and we'll be making that strong case and my job is to provide essential infrastructure to run the business it's to make that case it's not up to me to actually decide in that case so really we'll be making a very clear firm case for those conditions to be removed where we now we announced the project last April we started through the process of complying with the various planning preconditions we have continued on with the detailed work of design we've been out through engagements with our neighbors and various stakeholders we've had a round of two rounds of public consultation and we've started now the clearing works on the site with the view to be able to move as quickly as possible we'll be submitting the EIS in the course of the next number of months as well as what we want in terms of the noise it'll also be addressing other issues that have came up in the course of the consultation so just to sum up and turn over for questions I suppose three key things one it's key artery into the country it's getting clogged and we need to make sure it's able to actually work properly to support the development of Ireland north and south secondly we've got to bring on capacity that actually does that not just build a 3.1 kilometer piece of concrete and thirdly we've put Dublin airport in a position having a lot of positive momentum and a lot of opportunities and it's absolutely critical at a time when a lot of the factors in the external world are quite negative that we don't actually misstep or lose any of those opportunities so thank you for coming and thank you for listening