Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty has described what happened last weekend at Dublin Airport as a national embarrassment.
Speaking in the Dáil, he said the Government had sanctioned the large numbers of redundancies at the airport during the pandemic.
The Donegal TD said this had happened despite warnings from SIPTU that it would lead to queues stretching out to the car parks.
"That is exactly what happened," he said.
Mr Doherty said he was not convinced that the daa's latest plan will work and he accused Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan of being asleep at the wheel.
Inactivity by Government contributed to chaotic scenes of lengthy queues at Dublin Airport says @PearseDoherty @EamonRyan says 'no one can excuse what happened last Sunday' and 'everyone was let down' but he said his department has 'consistently engaged' with daa since March pic.twitter.com/352ZXt51NJ
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) June 2, 2022
He called on him to promise that heads would roll if there was a repeat of last weekend's scenes at the airport.
Responding, the minister said the airport authorities had committed this morning to hire another 100 staff but it will take around three weeks to get everyone in place.
He conceded that too many people had been "let go" in 2020.
Minister Ryan said he was confident the changes planned for this weekend would work and if it does not, Government will have to look at further measures.
Staffing still 'tight' at airport
Minister Ryan told the Dáil "we will throw everything" at addressing the problems at Dublin Airport.
He said there were daily meetings with the daa to check that the public were not going to be inconvenienced, but he warned the staffing situation was still "tight" at the airport.
Transport Minister @EamonRyan says there were daily meetings with daa to check that airline passengers were not going to be inconvenienced.
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) June 2, 2022
He was responding to Social democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy who said daa had used the pandemic as a cover for company restructuring pic.twitter.com/538vbzYyRY
He said during the pandemic there were "real concerns" about whether the airports and airlines could survive.
Minister Ryan was responding to Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy who said the daa had used the pandemic as a cover for restructuring the company.
She said that the redundancy programme was a "gun to the head" for workers and criticised working arrangements for staff.
She added €14 per hour was "unacceptable" when workers were only offered 20 guaranteed hours and had to be available for 40 hours.
Additional reporting David Murphy
