DAA directors gather today in Dublin Airport for a scheduled year-end board meeting. With the fate of chief executive Kenny Jacobs still in the balance, there is much to consider.
The operator of Dublin and Cork airports would much rather discuss the Christmas rush of passengers, but the atmosphere in the upper echelons of DAA is far from festive these days. A bitter boardroom rift with Jacobs may soon reach its denouement but it has been a damaging affair for the State-owned business.
Already facing major business challenges because of planning rows and the breaching of the passenger cap in Dublin Airport, the DAA board has spent most of 2025 in an unedifying firefight with its chief executive.
Mr Jacobs was served notice last Monday morning of a preliminary board decision to suspend him on full pay, pending a new investigation into issues of concern about his conduct. He has been out of the office since then and has yet to reply to the board.
RM Block
As chief executive, Jacobs is an ex officio board member. Under the law governing the State-owned airport operator, he retains that directorship. As such, he has the right to attend the board meeting. His intentions are not known. But if he chooses to attend the board meeting, he would have to leave the room during any discussion of his own case.
Still, the bigger question is whether Jacobs seeks to challenge his suspension in the High Court. As of Thursday evening, he had not exercised that option. But with the clock ticking loudly on the board’s notice of suspension, decision time looms.
With that comes an assessment of litigation risks: these centre on potential costs; and the prospect of a public airing in open court of the issues that led to the preliminary decision to seek a new investigation.
Jacobs did not reply to questions sent by email and text message. The DAA had no comment for this piece on the board meeting or the suspension of the chief executive. The drama is already into its 11th month and will, inevitably, spill over into the new year.
There is no firm deadline for suspension to take effect. But if a one-week notice period applies and the chief executive takes no action to block suspension, a board move next Monday to finalise the preliminary decision might be foreseen. The question of who carries out the investigation remains unresolved: in the frame are major accounting groups and, possibly, legal firms in London.
The proposed timeframe and terms of reference for investigation are also unclear.
Endgame
After long months of DAA turmoil and legal wrangling behind the scenes, the move into the endgame was signalled in public at noon last Monday.
In an email sent to 4,171 staff, DAA said the board had created and filled a new position of deputy chief executive. The post went to Nick Cole, the chief of the company’s airport consulting arm, DAA International.
“His career to date has given him great insight into the worlds of airport operations and aviation,” said a staff email from Siobhán Griffin, DAA chief people officer.
“I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating Nick on his new appointment and wishing him every success. Nick will take time in his first week getting to meet as many of you as possible.”
There was no mention of Jacobs, whose notice of suspension was issued earlier on Monday. For Cole, however, it was straight to work in his new post. “The deputy CEO is filling the void,” said one airport figure, referring to Jacobs being out of the office.
With the ultimate outcome uncertain, it is still too early to count the cost of the rift for DAA and its political master, Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien. But legal and other costs have been accumulating rapidly.
The move to suspend Jacobs came several weeks after O’Brien rejected a €960,000 severance payment for the chief executive that was agreed in September after mediation. With solicitors McCann FitzGerald advising DAA and Arthur Cox advising Jacobs, total legal costs are now said to be “approaching the same amount” as the proposed deal that the Minister spurned.
If Jacobs chooses to go to court, such costs would inevitably escalate. This is a key consideration for any potential litigant – and DAA’s embattled chief executive is no exception.
In two critical phases of the saga until now, Jacobs had an agreement from DAA to meet his legal costs.
The first was when two protected disclosures were made against him in February and March. Neither was upheld in an investigation by Mark Connaughton SC.
The barrister was asked to take on that work by a DAA subgroup comprising non-executive directors Risteard Sheridan and Paula Cogan. Sheridan is company secretary and chief compliance officer at AerCap, the aircraft leasing giant. Cogan is global head of sales for hotel groups Miiro and K&K, which are controlled by Indian aviation and hospitality conglomerate InterGlobe.
New issues that emerged during and after the Connaughton inquiry led the board to conclude – without an investigation – that Jacobs was unsuitable for the post. This led to mediation between the board and the chief executive under the chairmanship of industrial relations troubleshooter Kieran Mulvey. Again, DAA agreed to pay Jacobs’ legal fees for the mediation.
When the €960,000 severance deal was proposed, it did not include Jacobs’ legal costs. Suggestions at the time that the overall exit package was worth some €1.2 million were a reflection of the scale of legal fees then in play. Such costs have risen since then.
Different
Taking a High Court action against DAA to block suspension is a different prospect.
If Jacobs won such a case, DAA would be on the hook for his fees. The same might apply in the event that a settlement was reached on the courthouse steps, but that is far from certain.
But if the case went to a full hearing and Jacobs lost, then he would face the prospect of paying his own legal costs and those of DAA. Needless to say, litigation of this nature does not come cheap. Major financial questions must be assessed before embarking down that road.
But with the DAA board apparently set in its view on Jacobs, the High Court may be the only avenue open to him to fend off suspension.
This presents the related question of whether a case leads to open discussion in court of the issues the board now wants to investigate. A board delegation that met in October with O’Brien set out concern about matters separate to those raised in the formal complaints that were not upheld by Connaughton.
These included, but were not limited to, questions over certain information from Jacobs to board members. There was further concern over proposed changes, later scrapped, to DAA policy on the provision of wheelchairs to passengers with restricted movement.
The meeting with O’Brien also heard Jacobs was offered an opportunity to consider his behaviour. However, DAA directors found he had not showed appropriate understanding of the issues or a way forward to address them. That view has not changed since.
There is also the question of whether Jacobs himself raises any issues in relation to the board in any litigation he initiates.
The board’s move to advance towards suspension originated with a board subgroup that did not include Sheridan and Cogan as they considered the original complaints against Jacobs.
The board subgroup also excluded DAA’s non-executive chairman Basil Geoghegan, the businessman who has been heavily involved in managing the rift with Jacobs and the company’s relationship with O’Brien.
Geoghegan is a partner of PJT Partners, a US-based publicly listed advisory investment bank, and a non-executive director on the board of AIB Group. A former Goldman Sachs banker, he was appointed DAA chairman by then minister for transport Shane Ross in 2018 and reappointed by then minister, Eamon Ryan, in 2021. His term expires next year.
Although the row has been presented as a dispute between Jacobs and Geoghegan, the deal reached at mediation was unanimously approved by the DAA board. When O’Brien rejected that deal, the board replied that its view had not changed since its unanimous approval of the terms. The mediation agreement has since lapsed, setting in motion the process that led to the preliminary decision to suspend Jacobs.
What does O’Brien make of the latest moves? More than a month has passed since the Minister sought a swift resolution of the dispute, saying in mid-November that “I want to see a resolution one way or the other”. He added: “All I have asked and ask is that this situation be brought to a conclusion as expeditiously as possible.”
But with Christmas fast approaching, it still appears far from a conclusion. Asked whether O’Brien been notified of Jacobs’ suspension, his Department said “the Minister will not be commenting on any matters relating to the CEO of DAA as this is a matter for the board of DAA”.
The Department added that the Minister has confidence in both the chairman and the board. “The chair of the DAA engages regularly with the Minister and keeps him abreast of matters at the DAA, as appropriate.”
At this point, one thing is clear. The is little prospect of reconciliation between the board and Jacobs. That was the option favoured by the Minister. When he rejected the mediation deal, he called on both sides to settle their difference. Talks between lawyers for the parties followed but no agreement was reached. The chief executive again signalled he wished to reconcile but was still out of favour with the board.
Jacobs worked previously with Ryanair, Procter and Gamble, Accenture, Metro Group GmbH, Moneysupermarket Group and Tesco. He took the top executive post in DAA for a seven-year term in January 2023. Only three years later, he now faces a court showdown with the company or a new investigation behind closed doors.
