The Consumers' Association of Ireland has called for a Government investigation into Aer Rianta's attitude to safety following a report which claimed fire prevention at Dublin Airport was "unsatisfactory".
The nation's busiest airport received a "satisfactory" rating in the survey of Europe's major airports, which was managed by the German consumer organisation, Stiftung Warentest, and carried out with the assistance of the EU Commission.
The Consumers' Association said Aer Rianta was one of only four airport management companies which were unwilling to co-operate with the investigation. A covert inspection of Dublin Airport was conducted on November 26th, 1997. Heathrow, Rome and Milan airports also refused to co-operate.
In a statement yesterday, the Consumers' Association of Ireland said: "We have brought this report to the attention of Mrs Mary O'Rourke, Minister for Public Enterprise, on whose behalf Aer Rianta manages and develops Dublin Airport.
" We call on her to take action on behalf of the consumer and to investigated Aer Rianta's attitude to this safety inspection and to safety in general."
A spokesman for the department said the Minister would study the report and would ask her officials to look into the claims made by the Consumer's Association.
However, Aer Rianta stressed that none of the 34 airports surveyed received an overall "very good" verdict. Just three received an overall "good" rating and Dublin Airport was one of 26 which received "satisfactory" ratings.
Aer Rianta did not co-operate with the study as the organisers had advised that they would disregard national rules and regulations in carrying out the survey. There were no internationally agreed standards in this area.
Aer Rianta said in a statement: "The planning, construction and modification of all our airport buildings is carried out in full consultation and in agreement with the responsible local authority chief fire officer.
"Aer Rianta customers can be fully assured that their safety is given top priority at all times."
The findings of the fire prevention survey at Dublin Airport, following the covert inspection, were:
The duty-free and other shops, which usually have fire loads, were arranged in the centre of gateways. The gateway to Terminal A was very long and not particularly high.
Since individual functional areas were not designed as distinct fire or smoke sections, and there were no effective enclosures at the boundary areas, a fire in one of these areas might entail a spread of fire and smoke into almost all other areas of the airport:
Nearly all areas were monitored by automatic fire alarm systems. Manual fire extinguishers were present in all areas:
The number of wall hydrants was insufficient in some areas and that they were not easily identifiable by passengers:
Some areas of the airport have been restructured and modernised: however, there was no discernible consistent policy geared to meeting the technical fire protection goals.
Consumers had a right to know why the company in charge of safety at the nation's three busiest airports (Dublin, Cork and Shannon) would not take part in an international safety study, and why Dublin Airport had received such ratings, the Consumers' Association said.