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| Flight delays at Dublin airport | Flight delays at Dublin airport |
| (21 minutes later) | |
| Air traffic controllers at Dublin International Airport have closed the runways. | |
| The Irish Aviation Authority took the decision after suffering chronic breakdowns of their radar screens. | |
| The airport was shut down at about 1400 BST on Wednesday because air traffic controllers could not see the codes used to label incoming aircraft. | |
| The decision has forced dozens of flights to be grounded, or diverted to other Irish airports. | |
| IAA spokeswoman Lilian Cassin said the fault was first reported at 1145 BST on Wednesday and it was fully functioning 10 minutes later, but the system failed a second time. | |
| "When the fault happened a second time at 1330 BST, we didn't have the confidence to continue," she said. | |
| "Safety is our overriding concern and in the interest of safety we shut down the system from 1445 BST. | |
| "We hope to have it back at 1500 BST but that will be reviewed." | |
| Ms Cassin said air traffic controllers have experienced similar problems over the last four to five weeks, but that Wednesday's malfunction was the longest period the code system had failed. | |
| She revealed that IAA engineers were working on site, alongside a team from Thales - the French company which supplied the system - and Hewlett-Packard. | |
| "Engineers haven't been able to exactly pinpoint what the problem is," she added. | |
| "We want to be satisfied ourselves before we go back to operating." |