One furious frontline worker slammed the Operation Fanacht checkpoints after he was stuck in traffic for nearly five hours making his way to work yesterday morning.
The healthcare worker makes the trip from his home in Central Dublin to Kildare every morning, which usually takes him around half-an-hour.
But the hellish slog lasted from 8.30am to 1.15pm, spent mostly in traffic on the M50 and the Naas Road amid the rush-hour chaos brought on by the new Covid-19 compliance checkpoints.
And he said he wasn’t asked a single question when he got to the front of the queue.
“Only getting into work now,” he raged at 1.17pm.
“Didn’t even get stopped at a checkpoint, they’re waving everyone through. It’s a complete joke, a waste of time and manpower.”
The backlog even forced him to log into an important meeting from his driver’s seat while he was gridlocked on the M50.
He said: “I had a meeting at 9.30. I took a telecall in the car, I had been sitting on the M50 for 45 minutes.”
The main chaos came on the Naas Road, where video footage showed scores of cars, vans and trucks at a standstill.
One driver added: “Only one lane open on the Naas Road. This is mad dangerous. Everyone just lane swapping, it’s mad. Once I got into the single lane, I flew up.”
Another outraged motorist said in a video: “This is all the way down, look, Naas Road, holy s**t.
“That’s the road. At half nine in the morning. F*****g country has gone mental. People in their cars and trucks. Three checkpoints on the roundabouts this morning in Naas.
“But you can have a banger party until 6am in Dublin if you want, no problem. You just can’t go to work or bring your kids to school.”
Queues of 8km were reported in some parts of Dublin.
