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31st May 2022

Passenger suffered epileptic seizure amid Dublin Airport weekend chaos

Stephen Porzio

The passenger’s wife believes the stress of the situation triggered the seizure.

Monday night’s episode of Claire Byrne saw a guest state that her husband suffered an epileptic seizure during the chaos at Dublin Airport last weekend.

This follows the DAA (Dublin Airport Authority) confirming on Monday that over 1,000 people missed flights on Sunday due to large queues at the airport.

Claire Byrne Live’s final episode began with a discussion regarding the issues at Dublin Airport, with the host in conversation with some of the people who were there over the weekend.

Speaking to Byrne from Vermont in the US, guest Deborah described how her husband with epilepsy missed his flight back to the US on Saturday due to the queues.

She also said that she believes the stress of trying to get through security triggered a seizure for her husband.

“Absolutely it did. Stress can trigger epileptic seizures. He wears a medical alert bracelet. He carries medication with him,” she explained.

“But to have somebody queue in security for as long as he did, dehydration can cause it too.

“It was such a scene. It was really difficult for them to even figure out which queue to join.”

During this time, Deborah said she was speaking to her husband over the phone.

“He had finally gotten through security and yet had not made his flight,” she said.

“We were speaking on the phone… There was a group of people waiting for baggage and to be rebooked, they were already passed security but not through immigration.”

It was at this point that Deborah stated that she heard her husband say he was going to have a seizure.

“I was very concerned. Then I could hear him having a seizure. His language gets very garbled, he tries to speak but he can’t,” she said.

“I was trying to talk him through it. I was trying to get him to find someone to help him but he said: ‘There’s no one here. There’s no one to help’.

“I said: ‘Look for a security person or a first-aid person’. He finally was able to just lean up against a desk.”

Deborah told Byrne that her husband had family in Ireland who were able to collect him from the airport and take care of him in the evening but that he had to make it out of the building post-seizure by himself.

This was before he was able to board a flight back to the US on Sunday.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Monday, DAA’s Head of Communications Kevin Cullinane apologised for the issues passengers faced in the airport over the weekend.

Cullinane said the airport was operating at the max of its available staffing levels and on “very fine margins”.

“Yesterday morning when we opened security in terminal one and terminal two, we clearly didn’t have enough security lanes open due to resourcing challenges, and at the moment any absenteeism impacts on our ability to operate lanes,” he said.

Main image via Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie