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FLANKED BY TWO young staff members holding cardboard cutouts of ministers Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary pulled faces and posed for photos while holding a picture of Dublin Airport with a sign saying “Sorry, we’re closed”.
O’Leary was his typical loud and boisterous self at a press conference in Dublin today, as he heaped criticism on Transport Minister Ryan and Tourism Minister Martin, who he said are failing to deliver growth in Ireland’s aviation industry.
The main point of the press conference was to call for the cap on passenger numbers at Dublin Airport to be abolished. He described the cap as “artificial” and said it was causing Dublin to “lose out” to other European airports.
“Other airports in Europe are laughing at Dublin,” he said in reference to the traffic cap.
O’Leary called for emergency legislation that would abolish the cap, saying that “our two Green Party ministers” for tourism and transport “should go” if they can’t grow the aviation industry, accusing them of “faffing about”.
O’Leary said that Ryanair had been forced to abandon plans to base four planes at Dublin Airport and open 12 new routes because of the cap on traffic, which is set at 32 million passengers per year. He also pointed to the airport’s new runway, which he said was being underused due to the cap.
“Grow or go” was the message O’Leary had for the ministers, who he said had “failed to deliver” for Dublin Airport over the last four years.
Pointing to the the key goals of the Government’s National Aviation Policy, O’Leary said that Minister Ryan was failing to deliver on all of them.
Those goals, according to the Government’s plan, are the following:
O’Leary said he had been contacted by the transport minister and invited to meet him to discuss his issues with government policy. That meeting could take place next Thursday of Friday, he said.
O’Leary also riffed on some of his pet peeves, like airport noise complaints and environmental activists, as well as commenting on issues facing the airline industry, including recent Boeing and Airbus aircraft faults and the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
He said relations between Boeing and Ryanair are improving but criticised the “managerial” communication style of company executives, and that Ryanair was expecting to receive around 40 aircraft from Boeing in the near future, about 10 fewer than expected.
Delivery of new Boeing 737 Max planes has been delayed due to technical faults.
O’Leary also said that the resulting shortfall in aircraft supply would affect Ryanair’s competitors more severely.
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Currently we are sabotaging our 2 biggest indigenous industries – tourism & agriculture. Plus probably the single most important piece of national infrastructure – Dublin airport.
This is the green/progressive agenda – they WANT our free market societies to fail
@Gerry Kelly: Who’s we? The GP are doing this?
@Dave S: Well the minister for transport, the leader of the green party, is doing nothing to resolve the issue as per usual. Dublin airport expansion conflicts with his parties agenda….. Maybe that’s why he’s not getting involved or maybe he’s just stealing a living
@Gerry Kelly: ‘Our free market societies’ will certainly fail if we don’t address climate change and loss of biodiversity.
@Brendan O’Brien: Dublin airport doing their bit. Aviation will be net zero by 2050. Fyi…. Cement production by the two largest plants in Ireland were nearly double Dublin airports emissions, that’s never really talked about. Then there’s also massive industry and emissions going on outside Ireland that needs to change and has a much bigger impact on climate. Have you been to any of the big cities in the states or China….. Etc? Mind blowing compared to little ol Ireland.
https://www.dublinairport.com/latest-news/2023/05/19/daa-incentivises-airlines-to-reduce-co-emissions-with-new-sustainability-measures
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: “If governments want airlines to burn sustainable aviation fuel [SAF], they’re going to need to devote extraordinary sums of taxpayers’ money to make it happen,” Aengus Kelly, CEO of the world’s number one lessor AerCap, told the Airline Economics conference. Aviation being net zero by 2050 is pie-in-the-sky stuff and even the aviation industry is admitting to it now.
@Gerry Kelly: You forgot large energy using pharmaceutical and Data Centre Developments. Again paused by Green Party refusals to upgrade Grid capacity!! It’s a close call between Greens and sf for the prize of most destructive party!!
@John Dennehy: we’ll see. Have to start somewhere.
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0228/1434879-iags-sustainable-fuel-deal/
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: why mention cement when we need even more to overcome our housing crisis.
We cannot keep adding 100000 to our population every year and not build houses, but we probably can do with less weekend breaks abroad or enticing innocent foreigners gere on holiday to be ripped off at every opportunity
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: Aviation net zero by 2050 – ya, pigs will fly before that happens
@chris gaffney: I think you will find that it it is the fossil fuel industry lobbyists and their bribes offered to FFG politicians as well as the NIMBY voters that is stopping the necessary doubling of the national grid.
@Michael McSharry: No. It is cowardice by government.
@Brendan O’Brien: We don’t live in a truly free market society by any stretch of the imagination.
And put the people in hotels where?
So the DAA a Semi-State Company agrees to a planning condition to build a new runway, then builds the runway, and as soon as it’s built complains about the planning condition they agreed to in the first place, now the DAA and Ryanair want emergency legislation enacted to remove the agreed conditions, they are just like RTE another Semi-State Company who believes they are above the law.
@John Dennehy: The planning condition of the passenger cap came in with the planning permission for terminal 2, not the new runway. It related initially to infrastructure for people accessing the airport….. But yes their management and lack of planning for these projects, as well as abiding by the conditions isn’t good enough. But if there’s enough infrastructure there to cater for the busiest time of the day, 6-10am in the summer, then there’s no reason that increased flights can’t be catered for outside this period!
@another one? what’s going on is the semi-state sec:
Yep, it seems to be a problem of DAA’s own making with very poor management decisions who thought they could ignore previously agreed law-binding planning conditions that were in place before the Green Party came into power, it’s funny now that it seems their only hope is for Eamon Ryan to come to the rescue and bail them out.
They could always increase the flights out of Shannon and Cork
@Gearoid Conroy: Except it’s all just sound and fury out of our bould Mike.
Ryanair can’t get the planes from Boeing, and so cannot add the routes.
But he’ll never lose an opportunity to push an agenda.
The are billions of tons of methane leaking out hundreds of thousands of old oil wells around the world, making all the stuff we’re doing now a bit pointless.
Why buy a house near the airport and then moan about the noise,
@Fran Mooney: Yes. Or sell up and move on if you don’t like it!
Michael and Data centers have a lot in common ….
Definitely not for the common good….
@Kerry Evans: Short sighted on both counts I’m afraid.
Plenty of airports west of the Shannon. I live in Galway and it is only 45 minutes to Shannon or 3 hours plus to Dublin not to mention the huge queues. Why is everything Dublin centric. 20 billion for a single metro line to airport. That money could transform the west. Plenty of room for new houses and businesses. First we need to get rid of the Cabbage in Chief Ryan. He wants to take the country backwards Dev style.
@gregory pym: no it’s the climate disasters we are feeling already that are going to take this and every other country backwards and destroy them for our grandkids. The airline industry needs to stop growing and start shrinking to protect our futures.
I for one don’t want to fly to or from Dublin… The fact that I am forced to do so to go to see family in Germany or Poland is ridiculous.. Cork and Shannon are much more important at this point.. we don’t need to be travelling to Dublin for the South or West when we have better airports here already.
Victory for people who live near the airport.
People whose live have been made miserable by airline deliberately flying prohibited flight paths to save money.
Land excess aircraft in bogger airports.
Let the turnip munchers bear some pain.
Great with less one-off overseas visitors, maybe the tourism industry discovers their indeginous population and offers more affordable accommodation prices. We may actually come :)
The sooner the Green Party and Eamon Ryan are gone, the better. Bit proper gone, like the progressive democrats, people under 40 wouldn’t even know what’s that, this is what the green party has to be in 15 years from now when you ask a 25 year old in the future, them saying “the green what?”
Good!
Another Airport would surely help.
And?
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