Minister says army could be called in to assist with delays at Dublin airport

The army could be called in to help alleviate security delays if they return at Dublin airport, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said.

He was speaking as Dublin airport braced for its busiest weekend since before the pandemic, with more than 200,000 passengers flying out of the airport in the coming days.

Daa, which operates the airport, is keen to avoid a return to the chaotic scenes of late May when passengers faced lengthy queues of several hours due to security staff shortages, and more than 1,400 people missed flights as a result.

Up to 55,000 passengers are due to fly out of Dublin airport each day between Friday and Monday.

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“We will do everything we can to get through these problems” Mr Ryan told RTÉ radio’s News at One on Friday. His department was looking at all measures to get security staffing levels back to pre-pandemic levels. “We will look at all options, including the Army. I always said we would look at all measures.”

Mr Ryan said he did not want to see a situation where flights had to be cancelled, as had happened in other airports in Europe. That would be a real inconvenience for families hoping to take their first holiday in years.

He added that Daa had a further 100 staff at present undergoing training to provide a buffer.

Graeme McQueen, Daa media relations manager, said numbers passing through the airport had been approaching pre-Covid levels in recent weeks. “These passenger levels, which we have been handling regularly at weekends and on certain days recently, are set to become the norm on a daily basis over the coming weeks as schools break up and thousands of families head off on summer holidays abroad.”

He said airport staff had coped well with the busy Friday morning period, keeping wait times for passengers to clear security below 30 minutes.

Thursday saw a return at times to some lengthy queues and reports of a small number of nervous passengers barely making their flights.

Mr McQueen said more than 51,000 passengers passed through the airport on Thursday in less than 45 minutes. “Processing times did lengthen for a very short period in the mid-afternoon in Terminal 1 to around 60 minutes,” he said.

The airport operator continues to advise people to arrive 2.5 hours before a short-haul flight and 3.5 hours before a long-haul flight. If passengers are checking in a bag on their flight they should arrive an extra hour earlier.

It comes as Irish passengers could also face disruptions to summer holiday plans this weekend due to strikes by Ryanair cabin crew in several European countries.

Some cabin crew at Ryanair began a three-day strike in Belgium, Spain and Portugal on Friday in a dispute over pay and working conditions, causing limited disruption as the airline cancelled dozens of flights. Staff in France and Italy are expected to walk out over the weekend, while crews in Spain are set to strike again on June 30th and July 1st and July 2nd.

The chief executive of Ryanair, Eddie Wilson, played down the likely impact of the strikes on passengers travelling to Spain, and suggested some in the media had talked up the scale of the industrial action and “frightened the life out of people”.

He pointed to “minimum services” regulations in Spain that mandate a certain level of connectivity must be maintained even at a time of industrial action. “There is no such thing as a mass walkout in Spain because of the minimum service rules and it will protect a lot of those flights. And then what will happen is that a significant proportion of our people will work as normal.”

He noted the last time there was industrial action on this scale in Spain in 2018 “the vast majority of flights operated”.

Mr Wilson said the “proof of the pudding will be this weekend, and I don’t foresee that disruption. It is bad enough that people have been waiting for three years to get back on holidays and now to listen to this talk of mass walkouts”.

Anyone who has their travel plans disrupted as a result of industrial action will have certain rights under EU law. Under Regulation 261, airlines must offer passengers affected by flight cancellations a full refund or a rerouting on the next available flight, or at a later time that better suits the passenger.

If the passenger asks to be put on the next available flight the airline must provide care and assistance until they can be accommodated on an alternative flight. It must provide meals and refreshments and if necessary it will have to cover the cost of hotel accommodation and transport between the hotel and the airport.

Anyone facing a long delay as a result of strikes should also have the reasonable cost of meals and refreshments covered, and if a flight is delayed by more than five hours the airline must offer the choice of continuing the journey or a refund of the cost of the ticket.