Over 1,000 passengers may have missed their flights thanks to the chaotic scenes at Dublin Airport over the weekend.
Calls have been made for the management of Dublin Airport to resign after plans were thrown into chaos due to the lengthy queues.
Dublin Airport Authority spokesman Kevin Cullinane said: "We estimate over 1,000 passengers were impacted by the lengthy queues at Dublin Airport.
Read more: Calls for daa management to resign after Dublin Airport weekend 'fiasco'
"We'll be doing a further tally with our airline partners again this morning to ascertain the final number but at this stage, it’s well over 1,000 passengers for which we obviously unreservedly apologise."
Mr Cullinane said the long wait times were due to the shortage of staff and added the airport has been "aggressively trying to recruit an additional 300 security officers to man those security lanes".
Speaking about the chaotic scenes yesterday, Cullinane told RTE's Morning Ireland: "Yesterday when we opened security in Terminals 1 and 2, we clearly didn’t have enough security lanes open due to resourcing challenges.
"And at the moment any absenteeism impacts on our ability to operate lanes. So we’ve been augmenting our frontline security officers with staffing task force of over 450 back-office personnel."
He said that the "sheer presentation of passengers" arriving at the airport from 4.30am overwhelmed the system leading to the long wait times.
He said: "A lot of people now arrive at the airport in the small hours of the morning trying to get ahead of the process. We had a queue building on from very early on from 3 in the morning.
"And as these passengers tried to present themselves that first very busy wave of departures more and more people were joining queues.
"We have had to have very controlled access to the terminal by queuing people outside. We were clearly unable to process the volume of passengers that morning."
An emergency meeting between the Junior Minister for Transport and the outgoing Chief Executive of Dublin Airport Authority is set to take place today.
Politicians have been calling on the daa management to resign with Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey saying: “After what I have seen this morning, board and senior management of Dublin Airport should resign. I have never seen anything so bad.”
Additionally, Sinn Fein spokesperson on Transport, Darren O’Rourke TD said: "The DAA are responsible for managing the airport and, as such, it is their responsibility to ensure systems are in place to provide for the timely through-put of passengers.
"If passengers arrived in good time but have missed their flights due to inordinate delays of the DAA's making, then passengers should not be further penalised."
Read more: Dublin Airport passengers detail delays as queues line up outside at 4am
Read more: RTE star Brendan O'Connor jokes it is back to 'self-catering' in Dublin Airport
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