Dublin Airport security waiting times

Seems DAA are having a serious issue restoring services in catering too. Reports that Cork Airport has picked up to pretty good volumes of passengers but all fancy food halls, coffee places etc are still closed.

It looks like they or their outsourcers are paying unrealistically low wages into a tightening employment market with rising costs.

It’s the same in hospitality / food services. Twice over the weekend in Dublin and in Cork I saw cafes etc with signs up apologising for being closed on Sunday due to staffing issues / staff shortages and there are a number of places still running short weeks as they can’t get waiting staff.

I think we are seeing a lot of issues coming to a head: accommodation is too expensive, a lot of people from continental Europe went home during COVID / lockdown and didn’t return (also links to housing). That’s tightened the employment market. I suspect a lot of people also aren’t rushing to take low paid, customer facing jobs too - risks involved that weren’t there before etc. Then add increasingly steep inflation to the mix …

I think Ireland is going to get seriously expensive.

Maybe they are keeping it for likes if AerClub & Business Ckass bookings etc, as they have those extra obligations to fulfil.

You are absolutely right. Services of all kinds are getting interrupted due to lack of staff; result of poor wages & Covid, & disorganisation in recruiting. Even a percentage of the recruiters are absent from work.

Was on a group trip to Romania before Christmas and the general consensus among fellow travellers, whose first time it was to the country, why the hell would Romanians prefer to work in Ireland when they have world class facilities in their own country, eg a shopping centre like you might find in Dubai, shiny filling stations with first class bakeries and facilities to relax and shop, & stunning scenery. A lot of people have earned enough to put a deposit on a very nice home in their own country. Bit like the Irish who went to Middle East to earn enough to put on a house back home during the era of the “Sally O’Brien” ad.

That’s lousy money for that kind of job in this market. It’s a serious role with a lot of responsibility and serious customer interaction.

The pulling aside of bags for further inspection is, I believe, may be partly in response to the software package which flags potentially “suspicious items”. I’m guessing it may be overly sensitive compared to software/settings used at many other airports. Of course, for decades back software has been used to put false suspicious shapes (eg gun shape) which the operator has to click on; ok if it disappears, if it doesn’t luggage must be opened for inspection. It is implemented to keep staff alert and motivated. I would love to know about the settings used at Dublin Airport in comparison to others, but that’s not a secret likely to be revealed.

One thing I have observed in my travels through very small airports, some of these have been used for security staff training purposes, eg Newquay in Cornwall. Don’t know what it’s like now but at one time they opened every single checked-in luggage and called each passenger in a queue to account for items. It was infuriating, made it a miserable little airport to use on departure for that and a few other reasons. One man beside me had his leg gage opened in front of me, was full of colostomy bags with a horrible aul security bint asking “what are these for?” She stepped aside for a moment to get something from her office, and a junior security guy, looking all embarrassed, said “this is all to train me”. I subsequently read that it was serving as a school to train Airport security personnel for other airports in UK as it had few enough flights to pose too much real serious threat whilst offering the ability to go through every passenger with a five tooth comb on every regional/short-haul flight, generally in small aircraft.