Airport employment soars as 350 jobs added

Dublin Airport has announced that it is creating 350 new jobs in Dublin Fingal due to increased traffic.
Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Paschal Donohoe TD (FG) confirmed Dublin Airport had its busiest ever year in 2015, as a record 25 million passengers travelled through the airport during the past 12 months.
Passenger numbers increased by 15% last year with an additional 3.3 million people using Dublin Airport during 2015. The expansion was fuelled by 22 new routes and extra capacity on almost 40 existing services. To cope with growing passenger numbers, Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) is midway through hiring about 350 new staff in areas such as security, customer service and asset management.
The growth in passenger numbers is expected to continue into 2016, as 11 new scheduled services have already been announced for this year, including new direct transatlantic services to Hartford Connecticut, Los Angeles, Newark, and Vancouver. There are also new long-haul charter services to Cancun in Mexico and Montego Bay in Jamaica.
Donohoe welcomed the record-breaking traffic at Dublin Airport and the new jobs that are being delivered due to the growth in passenger numbers.
“I welcome the 350 new jobs being announced and look forward to continued growth in passenger numbers and employment at Dublin Airport in the years ahead.”
DAA chief executive Kevin Toland said: “DAA is hiring 350 additional staff as a direct result of this growth in passengers at Dublin Airport. We recruited about 170 new people last year and a further 180 staff will be hired during 2016.These additional staff are mainly in customer-facing areas, as we work to ensure that Dublin Airport continues to offer an excellent and efficient product to our passengers and airline customers as traffic increases.”
TD for Dublin Fingal, Alan Farrell (FG) said that the new job creation is a great boost for the area.
He said: “Dublin Airport had its busiest ever year in 2015, as a record 25 million passengers travelled through the airport. This was a 15% increase with an additional 3.3 million people using Dublin Airport during 2015.
“To cope with the growing passenger numbers, DAA is in the process of hiring about 350 new staff in areas such as security, customer service, and asset management, comprising of 170 personnel recruited in 2015 and 180 to be recruited in the coming weeks. This is providing new opportunities to people in Dublin Fingal.”
Farrell said that he and his party plan to deliver more new jobs that “pay more than welfare and where hard work is rewarded” in Fingal.
Of the new airport jobs he said: “There is an excellent pool of highly skilled people in the Dublin Fingal area and I am confident that these positions will be filled successfully.”
Fellow Fingal TD, Brendan Ryan (Lab) echoed Farrell’s views, he said: “The positive impact of these new jobs will reverberate across the local economy while more broadly than that, they will also help by enhancing services at the airport, thus boosting Ireland’s connectivity to the wider world.”