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Dublin Live
Dublin Live
National
Emma Nevin

Dublin Airport apologises after baby changing facility slammed as a 'health and safety hazard'

Dublin Airport has apologised after photos of a baby changing station taken this morning showed overflowing bins and nappies on the floor.

Mum Katie Elliott was in the airport travelling home to Northumberland with her 18 month old after visiting Ireland.

She took photos of the condition the baby changing area was in at gate 110 in Terminal 1 at 8:30am this morning.

Read more: Dublin Airport: One resident makes over 12,000 noise complaints during 2021

Her mother-in-law Veron Elliott posted the images online to notify the airport of the mess, calling it "unhygienic and a health and safety hazard."

Dublin Airport responded soon after with photos of the facility after being cleaned and said the issue had now been resolved.

They offered their "sincerest apologies" to the family and also said they "have asked our cleaning partners to keep a closer eye on this toilet - and all other toilets - in the terminals to ensure it does not happen again."

daa spokesman Graeme McQueen told Dublin Live that they "moved swiftly" to ensure the toilet was cleaned after seeing the images on social media.

He said: "We were disappointed to see the pictures posted on Twitter this morning. We moved swiftly to contact our cleaning operator and ensured that the toilet in question was cleaned as a matter of urgency.

"One side-effect of having passengers arrive earlier for flights currently is that they are spending longer in the terminal before flying, which in turn increases the amount of pressure on our facilities, including toilets.

"We continue to work closely with our cleaning partners to ensure that the required level of cleaning and maintenance is taking place in the terminals as the airport gets busier once again following the pandemic."

It emerged last week that some Dublin Airport cleaning staff had been moved from their roles to work airside at security as they had the correct passes to do so.

daa spokesman Graeme McQueen said on RTE Radio One last Friday that there is a "plan in place" to rectify issues with cleanliness at the airport.

"Those comments have been coming in every week," he said.

The baby changing facility at Gate 110 in Dublin Airport Terminal 1 at 8:30am on 18/4/22 (Katie Elliott)

"I think people have had to be moved from cleaning and areas like that. These people would have the required passes to work airside so at the moment they're very valuable at security.

"Our number one priority at the moment is, and we want to apologise for this, to get people on their flights. That's the number one thing we're looking to do.

"The airport maybe isn't as clean as it would be at the moment but there's a plan in place to correct that over the coming days and weeks.

"So hopefully anyone flying anytime soon will see us getting back up to the standards that we would expect from ourselves and that they would expect from us as well."

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