The government has agreed to a request by the minister for transport,
Eamon Ryan, to have the army on standby to help with security.
Potentially over the summer comes after calamatitive
scenes like these at the end of last month.
Also, the government says some early work is underway on legislation
that could lead to the return of mandatory mask wearing.
In certain circumstances, the move is being seen as precautionary no
immediate plans to introduce it in the Dáil before summer recess.
Well, here's what the justice minister had to say.
So this is simply a mechanism that we're going to put in place.
That would allow a number of members of the defence
forces to be trained up in security screening.
It would not be public facing, so it would be there
to help a lending hand should they need it.
But obviously we hope we won't get to that point, and really, this
has only been proposed for the summer months, where we know it's
going to be extremely busy and is busy at the moment.
Emer Higgins and Jed Nash are still here, and we're also joined
by by Bauer Media's political correspondent, Sean Defoe.
Sean, give us a bit more detail here what's involved in this contingency plan.
But the mayor board involves basically drafting in the Army.
If it is going to be needed over the next couple of months
now, they're not automatically going to go in.
If they are, it's because something has gone wrong as it has gone wrong
a few times now in the past, and they wouldn't be in public.
Facing role is not Helen, McEntee said.
There is.
They're not going to be checking your bag and security or have
Army officers checking whether or not your little Ziploc bag
actually has the right size of toothpaste in it.
That's not what's going to happen.
Instead, they're looking at them for roles that they have a say entrances
to the airport of patrolling the perimeter or things like that that would
free up other staff to then come in and do those security and check in
a rolls and what period of time are they looking at?
And how many Army staff do?
they haven't standby? - So it's going to start on the
sixth of July and run basically through August.
You're looking at about a six week period of the busiest time of the year, and probably
up to about 100 Army staff are going to effectively be on standby for this.
They have to do a little bit of training to get them ready for the roles
and just to comply with airport security and all that kind of thing.
But they'll probably still be stationed at the two barracks somewhere in Dublin.
And if there is a big issue with the airport, then drafted.
And although you imagine if there is a huge issue and people are suddenly
missing their flights that just drafting them in with an hour or two hours
notice probably is gonna make a huge difference at that stage.
I'm just wondering because DAA did say a few weeks ago on this programme, when we
asked them about, you know, whether or not the Army would be brought in, They said
We don't need the army, you know, we have our own army of staff here.
What's changed?
Well, what's changed?
Obviously, they don't feel that they have enough people because of the covid surge
that we're seeing, and that's putting a lot of people out of action.
So where they said a couple of weeks ago were grand, We're recruiting.
I think it's about 50 people a week, going to have
an extra 600 by the end of the summer.
But now they're also facing a lot of people being out, a lot of people being out
at short notice, and that's what led them to do this precaution measures.
They say they hope they won't need it.
And I think everyone kind of hopes that they won't need it and everything.
We find that that's why they put in place.
What do you think of this, Jet Nash?
I mean, we did all the politicians said the DAA.
Needed to have a contingency plan in place.
You couldn't have.
It seems like we saw a couple of months ago repeated
across the summer as the airport got busier.
So do you welcome this, like the senator here we know is the sound of chicken chickens
coming home to roost. We know that during the height of the pandemic, even though the
Dublin Airport Authority we're drawing down millions of millions of euros and state
support through the wage subsidy scheme, they were still letting many, many hundreds
of staff go through what they termed the voluntary redundancy schemes.
So remember the phrase that the CEO, using really vomit-inducing 'rightsising'
the airport, they weren't aware when flights are gonna go back to normal.
I thought was gonna be 2024 2025.
This is all on DAA management.
And let's be frank about this.
I mean, I I heard today from the director of communications when he was
saying, Oh, this is a case of one state agency helping another.
It's not, you know, the E SP helping out another commercial semi state agency.
This is calling in the Army, the military force in our country.
I know, but we already happened was the reality of the situation at the moment.
If there are more problems like the ones we saw last
month to the army need to be brought in.
So I mean, this was this was a failure from a resource planning perspective
from Dublin airport authorities do the Army brought in?
I can't make that call because I'm not aware of
what the actual needs are being brought in.
If they are needed.
That decision has been taken.
It's a contingency as we understand it.
We don't have all of the details, but DAA could have seen this coming.
What they did was they essentially, you know, got rid of some
of the stuff they used the opportunities provided by the pandemic
to actually, as they say, 'rightsize' their staff.
In fact, what they did was get rid of some very, very essential staff
and had a re hiring staff, some of them who used to work there on
actually lower rates and poorer terms and conditions.
So this has been a bad experience, A bad episode for D A management.
They haven't come out as well.
I'm conscious to that.
PT for the Army union or one of the Army unions has come out today and said,
Look, we are not here to solve private companies hitch our problems.
They're not happy about being called in.
Are they Emer?
Well, they're not, and you can understand that.
I mean, we've very trained, highly skilled members of defence forces, many
of whom work in casement aerodrome Valdano in my own constituency.
And I appreciate that.
And they stepped up to the plate when we needed
them to do other tasks during Covid 19.
And we're also grateful for that.
And none of us want them to be working in Dublin Airport, that's for sure.
This is absolutely precautionary.
Like before politics that came from the private sector.
We always have what were called BCPs business continuity plans.
This is what this is.
This is a situation where if covid means that people can't come
to work in Dublin Airport Authority, what we need to make sure
is that people can still catch their flights.
This is precautionary plan that we're putting in place.
And in the event that that happens while Jack is right, people were let go
during the pandemic that happened in airports right across the globe.
This isn't just a Dublin airport issue because the UK has happened in France.
It's happened.
You -
just let me finish, Jed. What we're doing here in Ireland is we're taking action
to make sure that people aren't going to lose their family holidays.
I mean, in the UK they're not taking this action.
Instead, they're asking airlines to cancel flights.
What we want to do is make sure that people can get on their flights.
That's what we want to do.
OK, very briefly shown.
There are still lots of issues within the airport.
You only have to look at Social Media to look at.
You know the rubbish to look at some of the cues to look at.
The baggage issues are huge.
It's been It's been total disaster of management for the last while.
And, like politicians, quite often get into this thing of Let's
call in the Army and hasn't already been for the airport.
You know, rhododendrons in Killarney National Park.
Let's call in the Army.
It's been all these different things, and now it is actually getting done.
But this isn't going to solve all these problems because it's not gonna provide
extra baggage handlers for the check in desks for the airlines.
A lot of the problems are actually now with the airlines
themselves and the Colbert problems that they have.
So look, I think it's a bit ridiculous and farcical
would tend to agree with me before that.
If you're driving, bringing in the Army solve a private companies problems The
private company hasn't done a very good job managing their business.