Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

As I stated, the Department is aware of this and has been in contact with the IAA during recent weeks with regard to the intermittent problems with the radar system at Dublin Airport. It was possible to resolve these and maintain operation of the system generally. None of these problems was as serious as that which occurred yesterday. We sought reports from the IAA on what happened and received them at the time.

I do not understand how one can have software for five years and suddenly something goes wrong with it. I am not sufficently technical to know this. This appears to be what happened and the problem is with the software rather than the hardware. I must wait until I receive the report to see what happened.

This incident was handled well by the IAA.

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