Dublin Airport's delays might take weeks to finally end, an expert has predicted.
Delays have been causing major headaches for people heading abroad over recent weeks amid staff shortages.
Disgruntled travellers have been taking to social media each day with images and complaints about their long wait to get through check-in and security.
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However, President of the Irish Travel Agents Association Paul Hackett has suggested that things will be resolved in a matter of weeks.
Speaking to TodayFM, he explained the problems that are being worked through and said: “The airport, like an awful lot of employers in this state at the moment, cannot find staff.
“Add to that the complexity of the airport position, those staff have to be garda vetted. Garda vetting and the vetting of airport staff has actually changed in the last period of time, to the point that those staff have to provide vetting for any country they have worked in in the last number of years - and this is slowing down the process.
“Then layer on what we’re all seeing at the moment which is the rise in Covid cases and you have staff shortages in the same way that we’re seeing it across the health services.”
As for the current advice being issued to customers heading to the airport in the coming weeks, Paul said: “All travel companies are encouraging and the airlines are encouraging their customers to get to the airport ahead of time.
“Hopefully this will be resolved as they redeploy staff to try and resolve it."
He continued: "We’re warning all customers, whether it’s terminal one or terminal two to be there in plenty of time. It’s very challenging or families and people with mobility issues having to stand in queues for that long but to be practical about it we’re aware that this is the case.”
Giving a timeline for the resolution of the sometimes three-hour-long delays, he said: “I don’t think there is anyone sitting out at Dublin Airport currently going ‘nothing we can do about this’ and just laughing it off, I think they take this very seriously and I think we will see action on this in a short number of weeks.
“I don’t think it will be an issue that will be allowed to fester for weeks on end but it is going to be there for the next two to three maybe four weeks so people just need to be aware.”
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