Dublin Airport delays: ‘Major catastrophe’ or ‘first-world problem’?

It’s just past 7am on Monday, the day after the fiasco at Dublin Airport, and Gavin Jennings sounds like he’s champing at the bit as he starts his interview on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). After curtly introducing Kevin Cullinane, head of communications with Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), Jennings launches into his questions: “Do you know how many people missed their flight yesterday?” Silence. “Hello, Kevin?” More silence. “Is Kevin there?” Admitting defeat, the presenter goes to an ad break. Passengers at the capital’s airport clearly aren’t the only ones missing their spot through system failures, though the inconvenience suffered by Jennings’s guest is negligible compared to people whose holidays have been ruined.

When contact with Cullinane is eventually established, he offers the corporate contrition that’s de rigueur in these instances, but the earlier glitch sums up the situation more succinctly than any “unreserved” apologies. Thus starts a bad week for the DAA. The airport story dominates the airwaves, perhaps predictably: in the midst of pandemic and war, trips abroad are supposed to be flights from stress, not gateways into it.

Indeed, the prospect of missing that much-anticipated foreign break captures the public imagination so vividly that some listeners have to be reminded that, in the grand scheme of things, the stakes are fairly low. On Wednesday’s Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), Joe Duffy urges irate callers to keep a sense of proportion on the airport’s proposal to “triage” some passengers into outdoor areas.

Duffy’s first guest, Chris, says the plan calls to mind the holding pens at the long-defunct cattle market at Hanlon’s Corner in Dublin. Duffy murmurs approvingly at this evocation of the rare auld times, though his antennae start twitching as Chris warms to his theme. “Then if you remember the slaves in the pens before they were auctioned off,” he continues, “and the Jews in the pens before they went to the gas chambers”. Hearing this, the host abruptly terminates the conversation: “Ah no, stop, stop, stop, it’s a first-world problem.” It is, to say the least, a deeply inappropriate comparison, though the sound of an alarmed Duffy scrambling into damage-limitation mode is always entertaining.

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Elsewhere, political expressions of disapproval are only slightly less exaggerated. Talking to Sarah McInerney on Wednesday’s Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) Labour TD Duncan Smith describes the situation at Dublin Airport as a “major catastrophe”, describing the summer outlook as “very grim”. Without lessening the distress of people watching their holiday plans evaporate in an interminable queue, it’s worth remembering there’s a war on before deploying such doom-laden language.

Then again, it’s unsurprising that guests can lose the run of themselves on Drivetime, so heightened is the interrogation room atmosphere that pervades the show. On Tuesday, co-presenter Cormac Ó hEadhra is showily incredulous when Prof Richard Layte of Trinity College tells of survey findings that children who don’t spend any time online have “poor outcomes” similar to those with too much screen time. “Hang on a second here, Prof,” Ó hEadhra splutters, “you’re telling me no time online is worse than some time?” And this is Ó hEadhra in a good mood.

[ Dublin Airport closes departures road to set up covered areas for queues ]

[ What are the alternatives to using Dublin Airport? ]

There’s no such benign indulgence on Wednesday, when he interviews DAA chief executive Dalton Philips, fresh from his grilling at the Oireachtas committee on transport, which the host colourfully likens to being in the ring with Katie Taylor and Kellie Harrington. Maybe so, but even that might seems like a tame undercard compared to the verbal pummelling Ó hEadhra dishes out.

After apologising – you guessed it – “unreservedly” for Sunday’s events, Philips is asked if there’s enough security staff to avoid a repeat of the incident. He starts to outline the factors behind the staff shortages, but is interrupted by Ó hEadhra. “Time is short, we can do without the vast contextualisation,” barks the host, who’s more interested in whether a “catalogue of management cock-ups” caused the farcically damaging scenes. His guest is “confident” that people will be able to make their flights: an impressively ambitious pledge for an airport boss, we can surely agree. But for all Ó hEadhra’s flurry of aggressive questions, he can’t land a killer punch. It’s a frustrating encounter, in keeping with the general tenor of the airport omnishambles.

An air of exasperation is also evident on Today with Claire Byrne (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), as the host asks if the Army should be called in to ease the security check problems. It’s a splashy question that occasionally pops up in Byrne’s repertoire: she has previously wondered whether troops should be sent in to disperse rowdy students in Galway.

But there’s nothing forced about her irritation during Wednesday’s interview with Brian Hayes of the Banking and Payments Federation. Discussing the migration of 900,000 accounts from the departing Ulster Bank and KBC, Byrne describes the process of switching banks as “hugely stressful”. “It can be,” Hayes blandly replies. “No, it is,” Byrne states firmly, “I’m doing it, and it’s really stressful.”

This sets the tone for the interview. Pressed by his host, Hayes tetchily defends his industry, calling retail banking in Ireland a “challenging landscape”, because of regulations that are part of the “overhang” of the State bailout of banks in 2008. “No one wants to let go of the legacy,” he complains. “We have got to be able to move on as an industry,” he then asserts, unfavourably comparing banking conditions here with other jurisdictions in Europe. (There’s no mention that most other European banks didn’t receive billions of state money for bad decisions.) When Byrne summarises her guest’s position as wanting to erase restrictions and “asking people to forget what happened”, Hayes replies that 83 per cent of the bailout money that was, as he puts it, “invested” in the pillar banks has been “handed back”. Which is nice of them.

[ ‘Clear now’ too many Dublin Airport staff laid off during pandemic, Eamon Ryan tells Dáil ]

It’s a remarkable item, the host’s calmly modulated inquiries contrasting with Hayes’s touchily affronted demeanour, encapsulated by his refrain that “people don’t want to hear this”, or variations thereof. Arguing your corner is one thing, but a little humility never goes amiss, particularly if your industry’s actions has disrupted people’s lives. Unreserved apologies have their place, after all.

Radio Moment of the Week

On Lunchtime Live (Newstalk, weekdays), host Andrea Gilligan returns from holidays in Spain, unscathed despite travelling through Dublin Airport: “We didn’t really have any major problems.” Getting away from the airport is a different matter, however, as she recounts waiting 45 minutes with friends for a bus to Donegal, only for another passenger to find out it’s been cancelled.

This despite Bus Éireann information on screens in the terminal saying otherwise. “I wouldn’t mind, this is the second time I’ve witnessed this in three or four weeks,” Gilligan says in disbelief, “We don’t seem to be able to organise anything about public transport in this country.”

Staying at home suddenly looks attractive.