Irish people are being forced to wait for hours in queues at European airports because of new Schengen rules.
Non-EU citizens are now required to have their faces scanned and their fingerprints taken upon their first visit to the Schengen area.
The rules do not apply to Irish people, who are citizens of the European Union; however, the new rules have caused huge delays at many European airports.
“At one stage, we had a five-hour queue in Brussels,” travel journalist Eoghan Corry explained on Newstalk Breakfast.
“The problem children this morning is Prague and Charles de Gaulle; Prague is about two hours and Charles de Gaulle is about 40 minutes.
“But right across Europe, it really depends because the extra checks are required that if anything comes under pressure in terms of staffing, people going sick or anything like that, the queues get very, very long, very fast.”
Children watch aircraft from a Terminal One window. Picture by: Alamy.com. Mr Corry described the new “equivalent of the ESTA” that Irish people apply for when they travel to the United States.
It is designed to replace the centuries old system of stamping passports and applies for short stays of up to 90 days in the Schengen area.
“British people need it,” Mr Corry said.
“There are about 13% of our population that travel on passports that are not Irish - those Filipino nurses, wonderful Pakistani doctors, people like that that keep our health system going.
“So, it would be subject to them, but Irish people are not subject to it.”
However, as Ireland has opted to remain the Common Travel Area, instead of joining the Schengen Area, passport checks still apply when visiting continental airports.
It means Irish people face long delays when travelling abroad for work or holidays.
“What we saw in Faro, Malaga, Gran Canaria, during the summer was that Irish people were caught in two-hour queues, even though they didn't need the extra requirements or the extra fingerprinting,” he said.
“They were just in the same queue as the British and it took a long, long time before you got into a position where you could be taken out.”
Main image: Border control at an EU airport. Picture by: Alamy.com.
