The DUB Passport/Immigration Queue Thread

trellheim wrote: »

Any link to that tidbit ?

I'm speaking from personal recollection on that one - that's why I put the disclaimer at the end.

But INIS will take over from GNIB sooner rather than later in T2.

The Veteran wrote: »

As Dial Hard said, I answered your question literally as you asked it.

Classic civil service obfuscation. An absolute gem that Sir Humphrey would have been proud of :pac:

Swanner wrote: »

Just standing in the queue at T2 right now. The hall is rammed. 3 booths open. Couldn't organise a piss up springs to mind. Absolute farce..

Yep, was there about the same time. Loads of people trying to skip over to the Non-EU queue as well and one of the DAA staff trying to stop them and the other one letting them go.

DAA need to make a huge immigration centre in both terminals anyway now.

But they, DAA are not making any money out of it, so they don't give a fig really.

Do GNIB and immigration ever talk to DAA about this travesty.

Veteran, any info? All parties need to work together. I think that may be an issue.

The Veteran wrote: »

There is plenty of discussion with daa - we see various managers on the floor all the time but it just gets busier and busier and the space gets smaller.

There were a lot of things happening this afternoon that consumed GNiB manpower to be fair.

There is a thread in work & jobs on the recruitment of new staff; nothing new on it in a few weeks so don't know when the next and hopefully final group are starting.

This final group is what is holding up moving to T2.

The comments on here about unions and all that are laughable - I couldn't tell you the last time a Union rep or someone from HR was in the airport.

We have plenty now but to be fair the majority of staff only started this year. There are fewer and fewer veterans left. More leaving over next few weeks, promotions are killing us.

Anyone been in the T1 Hall in the last week? What do you think of the "new" wall?

How long does it take to train an Immigration officer?

Interesting to hear the view from 'the inside' The Veteran, thanks for your posts.

The immigration officers always get my sympathy. It must be quite a hard job to not be able to slack off at all, just 8 hours of scanning passports monotonously at a time. That awful combination of both boring and not able to relax at the same time.

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Do you know how ridiculous you sound??

as somebody who travels through the airport about 60 times a year, i am speaking factual information.

i am away with work alot at the moment and i have actually started booking the 6.30pm flight home on thur/friday (thus meaning i am missing 2 1/2 hours in the office there) as opposed to the later flight home just because of the passport mess when arriving late in the evening.

my point about the immigration is also factual, please refer to the current open immigration thread about how we are the softest touch in EU when it comes to illegal entry.

Avada wrote: »

You haven't a clue about the capabilities of the officers.

sadly, i actually do. ive met many of them over the years on a professional and personal level and youd be surprised how frustrated they are with the current set up, not just in the airports.

Yawn ...

Avada wrote: »

No, your point about immigration is not factual. I'm assuming you're referring to the thread about the number of failed asylum seekers deported, which has absolutely zero to do with Immigration officers.

You haven't a clue about the capabilities of the officers.

Come on, our whole system needs a radical shake up but here is not the place to continue that.

The Veteran wrote: »

There were a lot of things happening this afternoon that consumed GNiB manpower to be fair.

With the greatest of respect as I enjoy your posts, and this is not aimed directly at you in any way..

But as a customer I couldn't give a ****e what went on behind the scenes today any more then my customers give a ****e what goes in my place of work..

There's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Why is no-one sorting it ?There were about 8 closed booths and 50% of the hall was assigned to non EU. There were about 12 people standing in that queue. The other side was absolutely rammed. There were 2 young ladies who were well mannered and polite. I over heard them discuss the situation as I walked by and I believe they were doing their best.

And to be fair and balanced the queue did move quickly.

But as a customer there's juts no excuse for that many closed booths at a busy time in the middle of peak season. Someone needs to find a solution and implement it. No excuses, no whataboutery, no passing the buck, no dithering, just fix it..

The Veteran wrote: »

There were a lot of things happening this afternoon that consumed GNiB manpower to be fair.

So, we have a situation whereby there are more officers than desks yet, despite that, there were 8 closed booths. I'd love to know what sort of events at the airport took precedence and removed so many and left so few to do their main job.

Swanner wrote: »

With the greatest of respect as I enjoy your posts, and this is not aimed directly at you in any way..

But as a customer I couldn't give a ****e what went on behind the scenes today any more then my customers give a ****e what goes in my place of work..

There's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Why is no-one sorting it ?There were about 8 closed booths and 50% of the hall was assigned to non EU. There were about 12 people standing in that queue. The other side was absolutely rammed. There were 2 young ladies who were well mannered and polite. I over heard them discuss the situation as I walked by and I believe they were doing their best.

And to be fair and balanced the queue did move quickly.

But as a customer there's juts no excuse for that many closed booths at a busy time in the middle of peak season. Someone needs to find a solution and implement it. No excuses, no whataboutery, no passing the buck, no dithering, just fix it..

Swanner, i don't work in T2 so won't discuss the operation of the primary controls there but just a couple of points...

Immigration Officers serve the State and as such our customers are the society at large. Our focus is on the operation of particular controls and as such a "busy time" for us is not driven or dictated by the passenger flow of itself but rather what may be contained within it. Passengers who are under investigation; who have been detained; who are being brought to aircraft for removal; to stations or prisons for custody or who are being collected from same for removal on flights when combined make for a busy time not just the flow of passengers in a hall. Some cases within that can be very complicated or require a lot of time.

The ICAO target for an EU passenger in an EU airport is 20 minutes, by your own admission the queue was moving quickly, so I'm inclined to say what was the problem? The queuing arrangement is down to daa, their staff could easily have allocated more floor space to EU and less to non EU; the barriers are meant to be set up to allow that - it's referred to as flexing (or so I've heard daa staff call it).

The numbers arriving through Terminal 2 hour by hour are not that big by the way - considerably less than in T1 peak hours.

Recent media reporting stated that approximately 2,000 people were refused leave to land in ireland to the end of June and that several hundred had documents that generated Interpol hits. (See Irish independent last week); amongst other things.

Passengers cannot expect to "walk on through" and to resource for a zero queue at peak times would be ridiculously expensive and insanely inefficient. There has been a 40% plus growth in passenger numbers in the last three years but zero increase in processing infrastructure in T1 (the core focus of this thread)

There is capacity in the immigration hall in Pier 3 that does practically nothing from 18:00 yet still has to be staffed. For Aer lingus passengers with carry on only and who are not connecting there is no legal or physical reason they couldn't exit via the Pier 3 controls. This won't happen because Aer Lingus won't seek it and daa won't allow it but hey ...

The Veteran wrote: »

Swanner, i don't work in T2 so won't discuss the operation of the primary controls there but just a couple of points...

Immigration Officers serve the State and as such our customers are the society at large. Our focus is on the operation of particular controls and as such a "busy time" for us is not driven or dictated by the passenger flow of itself but rather what may be contained within it. Passengers who are under investigation; who have been detained; who are being brought to aircraft for removal; to stations or prisons for custody or who are being collected from same for removal on flights when combined make for a busy time not just the flow of passengers in a hall. Some cases within that can be very complicated or require a lot of time.

The ICAO target for an EU passenger in an EU airport is 20 minutes, by your own admission the queue was moving quickly, so I'm inclined to say what was the problem? The queuing arrangement is down to daa, their staff could easily have allocated more floor space to EU and less to non EU; the barriers are meant to be set up to allow that - it's referred to as flexing (or so I've heard daa staff call it).

The numbers arriving through Terminal 2 hour by hour are not that big by the way - considerably less than in T1 peak hours.

Recent media reporting stated that approximately 2,000 people were refused leave to land in ireland to the end of June and that several hundred had documents that generated Interpol hits. (See Irish independent last week); amongst other things.

Passengers cannot expect to "walk on through" and to resource for a zero queue at peak times would be ridiculously expensive and insanely inefficient. There has been a 40% plus growth in passenger numbers in the last three years but zero increase in processing infrastructure in T1 (the core focus of this thread)

There is capacity in the immigration hall in Pier 3 that does practically nothing from 18:00 yet still has to be staffed. For Aer lingus passengers with carry on only and who are not connecting there is no legal or physical reason they couldn't exit via the Pier 3 controls. This won't happen because Aer Lingus won't seek it and daa won't allow it but hey ...

What formal mechanisms exist so that you and your colleagues can send useful suggestions to management.

Also, can you answer the following and I'm sure its not going to compromise national security in doing so.

1. How long does it take to train an immigration officer to the minimum standard to effectively carry out their duties.

2. Does any form of performance appraisal exist and if so what are the criteria.

I appreciate you and your colleague are here to stick up for yourselves and that is your own choice to do so but your selective answering of questions speaks volumes.

Avada wrote: »

These days in T1, which trellheim refers to, all booths are full 99% of the time.

It wasn't just a case of rostering more staff as you put it. It was running a large recruitment campaign to hire staff to do so, having lost a large number of staff to promotion.

Don't want to sound like a public sector basher, and I realise that there is a general entitlement to promotion in the public sector, but what kind of organisation actually damages its ability to do its job by promoting staff?

Can something not be done to award promotions but keep the staff doing the useful front-line job at least? Otherwise, you're going to end up with a top-heavy, too many chiefs, and not enough Indians structure.