Major delays at Dublin airport as passport machine glitch causes Christmas travel misery

Outages in new passport-reading machines is causing huge queues over the festive period

2017 is expected to be the busiest year for Dublin airport (AFP/ GETTY IMAGES)

Dublin Airport’s new passport-reading machines, installed on 30 November, are experiencing glitches and outages which have raised concerns about potential congestion at the airport over the Christmas holidays.

Three days after the e-gates’ installation there were major delays at Terminal 1, reports the Irish Times.

Queues spilled out from the passport hall and passengers had to be frequently held outside while the lines went down.

Despite 10 passport machines having been instated, only four appeared to be functional, with three of those operating slowly and rejecting a large number of passports that then had to be checked manually.

There were only two employees on hand to check travel documents, one for EU passports and one for non-EU, which caused further delays.

While the airport has said the Department of Justice is responsible for the machines, the DoJ says it’s up to Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) to decide how to manage the queueing.

The DAA told The Irish Times that the way the e-gates are operated “is a matter for Inis/the Department of Justice” but that Dublin Airport would have extra staff working throughout the festive period.

However, a statement from the Department of Justice said: “The question of queues or congestion in the areas leading to the immigration halls are matters appropriate to Dublin Airport who manage those areas.

“Revised queue layouts were deployed in the immigration halls in advance of the deployment of the e-gates and these are under review by Dublin Airport to achieve the maximum efficiency in the space available.”

It confirmed that there have been “a number of temporary outages involving individual gates as all stakeholders (passengers, DAA staff and immigration staff) become fully familiar with the system and a small number of issues are diagnosed and addressed.”

The number of passengers travelling through Dublin is expected to hit a record 30 million in 2017.

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