Dempsey seeks report on breakdown of airport radar

Dublin's Air[port's state of the art radar system will not return to full operation until the Iriash Aviation Authority (IAA) is "100 per cent sure" that the software problem detected by engineers is rectified, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey told the Dáil.

The Minister has ordered a full report into the breakdown of the five-year-old €115 million system, which has caused chaos at Dublin airport and disrupted flights for more than 20,000 passengers.

He also rejected Opposition calls for a full back-up system because he said it would cost at least €115 million, and was "not practical" since this was the first system failure in five years.

Mr Dempsey said "the process of verifying, diagnosing and testing the repaired system is now under way" and it "could take between 24 and 48 hours to restore full capability". It is now at 70 per cent capacity, he said.

"Everything seems to have been ironed out and there have been no problems or difficulties," but "if something happens at 85 per cent or 90 per cent capacity, the authority will be back to the drawing board," he said.

Alan Shatter (FG, Dublin South) said the past two days had done "profound damage to the image of this country" in business and tourism terms and asked "whether the software operating the radar system has been corrupted. Has a third party accessed the software through the worldwide web?"

Mr Dempsey could not "answer whether the software has been corrupted or whether there is a glitch in the system", because he was waiting for the report, but he said it had been indicated "that the difficulty does not relate to somebody hacking into the system".

He confirmed there had been "intermittent problems" with the radar system over the past number of weeks, but "it was possible to resolve these and maintain operation of the system generally. None of these problems was as serious as that which occurred yesterday. We sought reports from the IAA on what happened and received them at the time.

"I don't understand how one can have software for five years and suddenly something goes wrong with it. I am not a technical person, but this appears to be what happened," said the Minister.

Labour transport spokesman Tommy Broughan rejected the Minister's claim that it was the "first serious malfunction. A malfunction with the secondary surveillance radar system also occurred on June 5th and 6th." This system "was supposed to be space-age technology with a related computer management system". Dr James Reilly (FG, Dublin North) said he understood "the IAA upgraded its computer software a number of weeks ago, since when there have been intermittent computer malfunctions". If this was true, "why hasn't the old software been put back in place, given that normal practice is to keep old software until new software has been proven to function properly".

Mr Dempsey said "a back-up system is available, but a valid question has been asked as to whether the IAA requires an exact duplicate of the system".

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times