Children’s Rights Over Flights campaign group welcomes decision that requires greater transparency on claims about airport pollution
23rd July, Dublin – Parents, grandparents and other supporters of the Children’s Rights Over Flights (CROF) campaign welcomed the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) decision to uphold complaints about sustainability claims made in a Dublin Aviation Authority (DAA) advertisement. The radio ad, which aired in October 2024, claimed that Dublin and Cork airports would be “halving airport emissions by 2030” but failed to acknowledge that this entirely excluded emissions from flights, which comprise the vast majority of aviation pollution.
Supporters of the campaign, which calls for aviation to do its fair share for the climate action that children are counting on, were among those who made complaints. MEP Lynn Boylan (Sinn Féin) was also among the complainants. MEP Boylan said, “If companies want credit for climate action, they need to actually do the work rather than just invest in spin.” Boylan added, “The ASA ruling won’t discourage the DAA from engaging in greenwashing. We should expect more from our public bodies. That’s why I’m calling on them to take out the same amount of ad space to apologise for misleading the public”.
CROF spokesperson and mother, Louise O’Leary, said, “The reason greenwashing is so problematic is because it confuses the public about what we need to do to protect our kids from climate harms. The truth is simple – we need to cut fossil fuel pollution urgently across all sectors – and that includes aviation.”
Ms O’Leary continued, “When it comes to climate action, children and young people need meaningful change, not misleading communications. It’s unacceptable that the DAA – a State-owned body – would produce an ad with sustainability claims which entirely ignore the major source of airport fossil fuel pollution – its flight traffic.”
The ASA’s ruling means that the radio advertisement “should not appear in its current form”. The advertisers have also been advised that “any advertisement that refers to airport emissions must include a sufficiently clear qualification as to what the emissions relate to.” The ASA report concerning the complaints stated it had “considered what consumers’ understanding of a reference to ‘airport emissions’ was likely to be, and…that, in the absence of a clarification, it was reasonable to assume that consumers would see emissions from airplanes as being part of airport emissions.”
Children’s Rights Over Flights further point to the hypocrisy of the DAA’s sustainability claims, given their relentless campaign to increase Dublin Airport annual passenger numbers by four million or more. This would lead to huge increases in aviation fossil fuel pollution, when Ireland already uses record levels of jet kerosene. The campaigners highlight that, as the climate emergency and associated harms facing children worsen, the DAA’s application to increase the passenger cap, if approved, would reportedly cause related emissions to increase by 22% by 2031, which the group sees as unforgivable. They assert the offending advertisement is emblematic of the dangerous trend of the climate harms of flight traffic being ignored within media and political discussion. CROF are calling for this important ASA ruling to mark an immediate end to misleading information and greenwashing about Irish aviation.
According to the United Nations, “By misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is, greenwashing promotes false solutions to the climate crisis that distract from and delay concrete and credible action”. It has been reported that Dublin Airport generates the same carbon emissions as 1.4 million cars each year. Experts advise there is currently no viable sustainable alternative to jet kerosene nor technological solution in existence to meaningfully address aviation’s increasing levels of pollution.
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Children's Rights Over Flights 
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