Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said “serious questions” need to be asked on how chaotic scenes occurred at Dublin Airport which led to 1,400 people missing their flight.
Terminal 1 has been closed off to all vehicles and marquees have been pitched where people will be held to manage queues.
CEO of DAA Dalton Philips has admitted that not all security lanes are yet open.
And said although the DAA has no plans to cancel flights to help the situation, it is “running in fine margins here.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said: “The focus right now has to be on correcting and making sure that Dublin Airport performs to previous standards in respect of the number and volume of patients [passengers] it can accommodate on an ongoing basis and also in terms of the treatment of its workers as well in terms of the various pay issues.
“The DAA is a semi-State body and has a very clear legislative framework governing structures, operation board and so on like that.
“So the management is accountable to the board of DAA and ultimately the board is accountable to the shareholders to the Government.
“Certainly three things I mean, obviously there's a change happening anyway in respect to the chief executive officer position.
“But serious questions need to be asked in terms of what has happened here, and serious lessons need to be learned.
“So that's where the focus is now.
“I think the more important point I would say to you is that yes, there has to be a reflection on this and there could be decisions in terms of how, as a commercial State company the DAA is operating, to make sure that it can be accountable for the smooth, efficient operation of Dublin airport, which has been the case pre pandemic, but certainly not acceptable what happened last week.”
Mr Martin said he thinks this is something Ireland can recover from but added “I think it never helps that events of that kind happen in terms of the flagship airport.”
Speaking to RTÉ, Mr Philips said that there was a build-up between 3.30am and 4.30am on Friday morning “which was the busiest period.”
He said the longest time through security was 45 minutes at that period of time.
He said: "It is a very busy day and anxious passengers are presenting early, which is not surprising given the anxiety out there.
"Staff have been brilliant; it’s a very busy day and it’s going to be a very busy weekend.
"We will have this pre terminal area which is our further contingency and is certainly a learning from last Sunday.
“That will go into operation towards the end of next week.
"As a contingency we do have some queueing today which is just outside of the terminal. They are covered and people were being channelled through that.”
However, he said it was not possible at this stage to have all security lanes opened at the airport.
He added: "So, whilst we have recruited 200 extra security officers to date, we actually still need to continue to hire another 100 and we’re still not at a level we need to be to consistently offer the service that we would have offered in the pre-pandemic period.
"We’re in a very delicate situation because when you are down to the required number of officers you need, you can find that you have a very quick and rapid buildup of queues.
"The debate is do we work in this direction or do we curtail capacity and cancel flights, which is what many European airports have been doing? I certainly don’t want to do that. I don’t think that’s right but I do admit you’re running in fine margins here.
"We’ve got a class of 35 [security officers] next week so we’ll continue to hire. By the end of June, we will be at the full complement of officers that we need.
"But between now and the end of June it’s delicate.
“At some stages there will be long periods of queuing, up to an hour.”
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter
