So they let 1,000 people go from Dublin Airport; a vital piece of infrastructure
As you pointed out yourself. And that redundancy
package was signed off by government.
So it's not simply a case the government can stand back.
And as they like to do with with many things, they can blame somebody else.
Uh, they do have a role to let me finish, please.
Okay, so this is probably going to continue for
the whole evening, If you don't mind.
Please don't interrupt me care.
They have, uh, they signed off on those redundancies.
They were warned actually by the unions at the time that there
would be accused out to the car park, though those were the
exact words that were used by Jerry Brennan from SIPTU.
He said there will be queues out to the car park,
and that's in fact, what has happened?
I would question how redundancy situation exists in fact, if
the job is going to be required because, as we all know, that
the person that gets made redundant, it's the role.
So those roles are required.
And when Mr [Graeme] McQueen, who you know, it was a very
able job representing Dublin airport.
But what he refers to as this task force okay, that's people who already have full
time jobs in Dublin airport are being asked to come in and do extra time.
So they didn't have a contingency plan in place.
That was the problem.
People are always going to ring in sick.
That is the nature of work.
You have to have a contingency plan.
There was no contingency plan.
1000 people missed their flights.
Those people are out of pocket.
Some of them have had to cancel their holidays.
How are they going to get their annual leave back?
These are all questions that need to be answered.
And we also need to know what was said to the junior minister when
she went to the meeting with Dublin Airport last Thursday.
They were certainly able to pull them all over her eyes.
She wasn't asking the right questions.
The minister has basically said that that the D A said they had everything in hand
and kind of my main concern at the moment is we are now three or four days.
We have a joint bank on the weekend, your 100,000
passengers going through per day the D.
A need to put a plan in place whatever form that takes to ensure and whatever resources
are required to make sure people can get their flight on Corey two things.
Is this happening in other airports?
Absolutely.
It's happening right across Europe and the Airport
Council International have identified that guy.
Bringing staff in and recruiting staff for security jobs has been a huge problem.
A lot of airports scaled down during covid.
They've also identified passenger behaviour were
not as adapted packing as we used to be.
They've also identified the fact that there's peaking
of flights by the airlines in smaller clusters.
Is putting security under pressure, all of them under pressure.
But Dublin was pretty spectacular yesterday.
All of them are at the edge of being, you know, something, swinging them over
and pushing them over the edge, as happened with Dublin on Sunday.
What happened is was quite predictable.
We had the issue of the enhanced vetting came up last
September, and everybody had to deal with it.
The airlines had to deal with it.
DAA seemed to be in slower dealing with that.
So in many, many ways, well, you know when you when they were
that close to the edge, 17 absentees drove them over.
Every single part of the airport has been under the same pressures.
It really needn't have happened on Sunday, and the worrying thing is known as
we were saying, We're coming on to the June bank holiday began and the start
of the real summer season for a lot of people June, July and August.
We haven't reached the peak yet, haven't we?
Got until June 24 will be the peak in terms of
the passengers going through the peak.
The busiest day in Dublin Airport history is 118,000 in 2018 and 2019.
So we're going to be close to that now.
They've done an airport say yesterday was a bit of an anomaly.
It didn't happen.
But there are other issues.
Some of the airlines are facing the same issue.
Check in desks as a problem.
We have a tour operator that has people stranded in 11 countries tonight
that operates with a good, substantial number of Irish customers.
It's a big, big problem.
That is not just about the security Q.
In Dublin Airport that internationally, the industry has to sit
down and different governments, and we also have to look at.
For instance, here's a solution for the morning.
Those 248 people who were given redundancy or statute barred are under
the terms of a redundancy package not allowed to be rehired.
If some sort of temporary stay could be put in to bring people in temporarily
over the coming weeks, that would be the first step in the solution.
You're nodding your head.
That's what's required.
We are where we are, right?
Uh, the DAA.
And I agree with on the DAA.
Should have this thing should have been resolved in terms of recruitment
once already have had eight months to put this in place.
What we need now is to bring staff experienced staff back, be it on a temporary
basis to ensure we can get over the cliff edge of next weekend and then the
plans they're going to put in place for the rest of the summer.
If you're 50,000 passengers going through over the weekend per day,
it's going to be 100,000, maybe peak at 120,000 it'll be chaos.
And this is about ultimately about management
and the spokesman on there from the talks.
A good line, but ultimately, the DEA itself in Dublin airport messed up
This but a management Justin, is that real difficulty here, Daniel?
Because Minister Norton did get reassurances, didn't
she last Thursday that everything was OK?
So how can we trust the next set of assurances?
We probably can't until, like, the proof will be in the delivery.
And I suppose like, this weekend will be a critical test for the airport.
And I think as well, you know, it reflects somewhat
badly on Hildegarde Naughton in as well.
You know that she has gone and had these daily meetings.
We're hearing about these meetings all the time.
Like what are they meeting about?
If this thing could still happen, what are they?
What are they actually being told?
What are the Dublin airport authority actually telling government?
Like Karen, Minister, Hildegarde Naughton has met with the repeated the
DAA charged with managing the other professionals that are highly paid.
She getting wrong information, then?
Certainly.
No, no, no.
Certainly when you look at it right, the DAA clearly in terms and
on speaking about in terms of the mix in the way the passengers
came, particularly Sunday morning, they were not prepared.
Should the army brought in, Do you think, Louise?
And why has that been, you know, written off the table?
Well, I think that support should be put in place if they're needed.
And I think they need to work with the Dublin Airport Authority on that.
But we can't get away from the fact that, you
know, and Karen can commentate away there.
But we can't get away from the fact that the government signed off on that redundancy
package without knowing what the contingency arrangement was going to be.
So the fact that what happened on Sunday morning and it does
reflect on us badly not nationally and internationally.
Of course it does.
But more than that, you know, we need to know that we have that connectivity.
We need to know that that connectivity is going to be there are going to
be reliable, and the only way to do it is to ensure that the airport is
properly staffed and it won't properly staff an airport or anything else
by allowing people to go when the jobs are there for them to do