Dublin Airport opened in January 1940 at Collinstown, on the site of a First World War airfield north of the city, with a single grass runway and an elegant curved terminal by architect Desmond FitzGerald that became a celebrated example of Irish Art Deco modernism. Aer Lingus, the national carrier founded in 1936, moved its operations there. The airport grew steadily through the postwar decades as Ireland's window on the world.
Concrete runways arrived in the 1940s, a new terminal in 1972. Traffic exploded after European deregulation, driven above all by hometown disruptor Ryanair, founded in 1985, which grew into Europe's largest airline with Dublin as its headquarters and largest base.
Terminal 2 opened in November 2010, giving Aer Lingus and long-haul carriers a modern home, and Dublin's US preclearance facility, shared in Europe only with Shannon, lets passengers clear American immigration before boarding. The parallel North Runway finally opened in August 2022 after decades of planning. Now handling well over 30 million passengers a year, the airport has been constrained by a contentious planning cap on annual passengers, one of the loudest debates in Irish aviation, even as transatlantic and European traffic keep setting records.