Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was a constructive and productive meeting. There are a number of factors and we would ask the Minister of State to follow up on that. If the weather is bad, there can be people queueing outside T1 and T2 in the rain, which is unacceptable for us as a committee. We ask the Minister of State to follow-up. We made it quite clear to Dalton Philips, the CEO, and his colleagues in the management team that that cannot take place. It is unacceptable in this day and age that people need to do that.

Second, those in the DAA appear to have very little wriggle room in terms of the available manpower. They were given additional manpower of 40 people but 30 of those will be trainees, three are coming from Cork and seven are part of an internal reallocation. They were down 37 during the weekend, with 17 of those due to a monumental management cock-up with regard to trainees who were not certified but who were included in the roster, and there were 20 absentees on the Sunday. To get through this weekend is very important. There are many things that we welcome. They are opening a lot more lanes and there will be 12 lanes at peak times, and they have the 40 staff. However, they do not appear to have any contingency in terms of staff on call, which is a worry for the committee.

The rain is a huge factor and it needs to be quickly nailed down. They need to find some way to ensure that if it is raining, people are inside. It is not acceptable that people are outside. We ask that when people are queueing, they would give out water and look after people with food, which was not happening last weekend.

We ask the Minister of State to keep a serious eye on what is happening. We have said to them that we will look to bring them back in again by the end of June. They expect that, by that time, they will have all of the 167 additional security checkers in place for the summer schedule. It is very regrettable what happened last weekend. We can talk about this all we want but the bottom line is that there was a cock-up in the rostering and that was a management failure, pure and simple. It should not have happened. There will be absentees. Our only concern is that there is very little headroom in terms of staff. If they get fair weather and the 40 are there, it looks like they will get through with a pinch, but it is something that we need to keep an eye on.

I assume the State stands ready so that if there is a need for further supports in any form and things happen over the next couple days, the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and the Government stand ready to provide support. I do not believe it is tolerable for any member or any customer, and the general public will not put up with what happened last week if there is a repeat of it this weekend. Whatever needs to be done will have to be done. Is the Minister of State committed to that area?