Thousands of passengers were affected by long delays in a weekend of chaos at Dublin Airport as it does not have enough staff to meet rising demand.

In May 2019 an average of 90,000 people went through the airport per day. Speaking on RTÉ's Drivetime, Graeme McQueen - media relations manager with the DAA, which operates the airport - revealed that up to 100,000 passengers per day are expected on the upcoming bank holiday weekend.

He said: "We're working very hard to rectify that with our resourcing trying to get new security staff on board.

"That process obviously takes quite a long time because of the training that's required for these jobs, so we're looking to see what we can put in place."

Over the course of the pandemic, the DAA cut its workforce by one third, with 1,000 staff leaving.

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Its security staff was reduced by 248 following voluntary redundancies. There are currently 600 people working in security in full-time and part-time roles.

Since recruitment began before Christmas last year, the DAA has hired 200 security screening staff so far and expects that number to be 390 by the start of July.

A spokesman for the DAA said that once the recruitment process is complete, security head count will exceed the 860 staff the airport had before the pandemic.

Security officer jobs are being advertised by the DAA, offering €14.14 per hour.