Heavy queues seen at Dublin airport. Photo: Twitter Having initially defended a tweet that was widely criticised as making fun of Jesus’ name, the DAA have backed down and removed it following massive backlash.
While thousands of passengers raged at delays in security queues that caused some to miss their flights, Dublin Airport’s Twitter page responded March 29 to a follower who tweeted the airport asking, “Any update on the lack of sausages in terminal 2?”, saying: “No, but did you know that if you say ‘Jesus’ backwards it sounds like sausage.”
Offensive
The joke caused immediate upset, with many calling it offensive and inappropriate, particularly as reports came in of “crazy” queues causing “ridiculous” waiting times.
Patrick Kelly wrote to Dublin Airport, saying the “tweet was offensive and inappropriate” and added that Dublin Airport “needs to apologise to Christians and remove the tweet. Today. It would pay you better to sort out the chaos up in the airport.”
Following a query from The Irish Catholic newspaper March 30, the DAA initially stood over the Tweet, saying it was “disappointing” that some were interpreting the joke to be offensive.
“The tweet was a light-hearted response to a light-hearted question about sausages,” the DAA’s spokesperson Graeme McQueen told this paper.
“It is disappointing to see attempts being made to interpret the tweet as having any deeper meaning than that.”
The tweet remained on Dublin Airport’s feed for a further 24 hours after our inquiry, before being taken down.
Following a further query from this paper, Mr McQueen confirmed the tweet had been removed as “some Twitter users seemed to be taking offence to it”.
“We apologise if the tweet, which was intended as a light-hearted response to a light-hearted question about sausages, offended anyone,” Mr McQueen said, adding that “this was never our intention”.