Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We meet on a daily basis about what is happening in the airport on a given day and the resource situation. This morning, there were 13 lanes open in terminal 1 and ten lanes open in terminal 2. In regard to the times, while not in the ordinary manner of the way an airport works, were nothing like the scenes that had been seen previously. We need to check on a daily basis to make sure that the public is not inconvenienced. That is the first and most important thing we discuss every day. It has been primarily about how we get in the staff and resources and deploy them. That has been the key issue, not just in this sector or airport, but in others. Training and making sure that those people are in place has been the key issue going right back to March.

As the Deputy said, the original redundancy occurred two years previously, in the first few months of the Covid pandemic. No one knew then what the future of aviation was. For long periods, there was real concerns as to whether our airlines and the airports would be able to survive. What we in government also discussed on an ongoing basis was the provision of supports for the airports, especially regional airports which were further and worse hit, but also Dublin Airport, to try to make sure we got through the crisis during which aviation disappeared for two years, in effect. The numbers went down.

Since that time in March, there has been razor-like focus on resources in terms of training, deployment and staffing. Up to last weekend, it was incredibly tight and it is still tight. The reason Dalton Phillips was not able to give cast-iron guarantees at the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications yesterday is that we are still in a very tight situation. There will be some 50,000 passengers today, 45,000 tomorrow, 49,000 on Sunday and 50,000 on Monday. The airport is counting those because the resources are not yet back. Those are pre-Covid passenger numbers and our resource numbers are not yet back. They will be very shortly, but in this tight intervening period, we talk about how we can make sure we manage through this difficult period. We will manage by throwing everything at it. We will throw staff at it and bring staff up from Cork. We will look at a range of different options and further options as needs be.

I will speak about the wider issue. The Deputy has a long record in discussing issues about working conditions, the nature of work practices and their ethics or ethos. We need to look at just-in-time contract arrangements for workers to create much more stable and certain working conditions in order that we hold on to people, do not have to employ more people and can get the best sort of working environment. Dublin Airport can be, has been and will be that. However, we need to look at the industry in a broader perspective with regard to practices of keeping a very tight margin and tight timelines.

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