Drone menace at Dublin Airport

A sluggish response

Sir, – Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan will bring a memo to Cabinet tomorrow on tacking the disruption caused by drones at Dublin Airport. It will take a number of weeks to acquire the necessary equipment. In the meantime, his department will be looking at other measures that could assist in managing traffic at the airport and avoiding disruption in the case of a drone sighting. He agreed the issue should have been tackled “quicker” but said his focus had been on trying to keep the airport open following the pandemic.

This gives the sense of a Minister struggling manfully with an issue which came from nowhere in recent months. Needless to say, that is not the case.

On February 27th, 2017, Dublin Airport launched its “No Drone Zone Awareness Campaign”. This was welcomed by the Irish Aviation Authority. Its director of safety regulation said: “There have been a couple of incidents of people using drones close to Dublin Airport which have disrupted operations.” That was six years ago.

On February 21st, 2019, Dublin Airport suspended all flight operations following the confirmed sighting of a drone over the airfield.

READ MORE

That was four years ago.

Six years and four years later we have recently had six drone disruptions at Dublin Airport in eight weeks.

You report (March 3rd) that officials are unable to decide whether responsibility for dealing with drone incursions resides in the Department of Transport, the Department of Defence or the Department of Justice. The good news is that officials from all the government departments agreed that the problem should be tackled. That’s progress, I suppose.

At the risk of involving yet another Government department, might I suggest that it’s time for Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Public Expenditure and (lest we forget) Reform, to crack the whip? – Yours, etc,

PAT O’BRIEN,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has announced that it will take weeks before anti-drone technology will be available for use at Dublin Airport.

In the meantime, how about hiring a few clay-pigeon sharpshooters. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN CULLEN,

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 16.