Dublin Airport plan to focus on queues, lanes, and maximising staff

Long snaking queues for Departures at Terminal 2 on Sunday morning. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Early indications on the Daa plan for Dublin Airport due to be published on Wednesday suggest it will point towards new measures in terms of queue management, more lanes, and the possibility of maximising staff, according to Sinn Féin spokesperson on Transport, Darren O’Rourke.

In an interview on Morning Ireland, Mr O’Rourke said passengers who are travelling this weekend need “absolute assurance” that this system will work.

“I think there will be concern if it only talks about creating fast queues and slow queues. The question for me really is what additional resources can be brought to bear to ensure that we don’t have the scenes we had last weekend," he said.

Mr O’Rourke added that the Daa has had a contingency plan in place since March, which included the redeployment of staff and a task force, and this was not sufficient to prevent the debacle of last weekend.

“If the plan they come up with this afternoon doesn’t bring additional resources, then we can’t have confidence that what happened last weekend isn’t going to happen again," he said. "That’s a deep, deep concern.

"What we need before this weekend, with the resources of the Daa internally but also with the resources of Government, is a commitment, a cast-iron guarantee that the scenes we saw last weekend won’t happen during this weekend, or this month or this summer.

"We need a plan for the whole summer to provide the type of assurance that people need because if we don’t have assurances from the Daa, the natural response from people will be to panic, to be concerned, to arrive earlier and that has a knock-on consequence in terms of the flow of passengers through the airport.” 

Error in letting staff go

Mr Rourke also spoke to the Pat Kenny Show on Newstalkwhere he said the Daa made a management error in letting experienced staff go during the pandemic.

“It was a gross misjudgement," he said. "Whatever the motivation was I think there has been lots of criticism, and I would share it, in terms of how aggressive they were, their cuts and the amount of experienced staff they lost.

"I understand that 80% of experienced members of the unit could have been lost. That makes a difference because it means your organisation's capacity is significantly reduced.

"The Daa has a responsibility to know its business. During the pandemic there was a huge pent-up demand for recreation, to visit friends and families.

"We have some of the most successful airlines on the planet in this country. If ever a country was going to rebound well it was Ireland.”