Watch out, Eamon! O’Leary might carry more weight with voters
MICHAEL O’Leary likes taking cheap shots almost as much as Ryanair professes to offer cheap fares. The airline boss’s current target is Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, who has both transport and the environment among his ministerial responsibilities.
O’Leary made a rare appearance on national radio recently, labelling Ryan an ‘idiot’ and calling for his resignation as Transport Minister.
On Twitter, his social media team, very likely to have operated under instructions of the very hands-on boss, mocked Ryan, using an old photo of him napping during a Dáil session at the Dublin Convention Centre during Covid times. Saying he is ‘forever asleep at the wheel’, it accused him of snoozing during the security queues crisis of 2022 at Dublin Airport and in 2023 when drones closed the airport six times – and ‘now, asleep once again when Dublin Airport capacity capped’.
By yesterday afternoon he had published an ‘open letter’ to Ryan, repeating the allegations and claiming that ‘despite your almost fouryear tenure as Ireland’s Minister for Transport, it is clear that you either have no idea what your Government’s National Aviation Policy is, or your (sic) are determined to frustrate this policy’.
O’Leary can claim that his selfinterest intersects with the national interest. Ryanair wants more and
‘We all know that we are very lopsided in this country’
more traffic through the airport, which he claims brings more economic benefit to the country, especially for tourism.
Under a previous planning permission, the airport is not supposed to allow more than 32million passengers a year to travel through it. It is now believed to be hosting more than 33million and that will only grow – if permitted. DAA, the airport’s State-owned operator, has a planning application with Fingal County Council. The latter will decide if the capacity can be increased and, if precedence is followed, is likely to focus on road traffic access instead of aircraft noise for nearby residents or carbon emissions in making its decision.
The identity of the decision maker is an important point: laws most likely would have to be changed to allow for the Government to override the planning process. Ryan is as much as an outsider in this process as O’Leary and can only make observations. His Green Party colleagues have argued against expansion just as the most senior Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil people are in favour.
Ryan has refused to say that he wants the cap at Dublin Airport retained, but has spoken about diverting traffic to other airports.
‘We all know we are very lopsided in the country,’ he said this week. ‘All the development that is happening in Dublin, we need to see it happening in Shannon and Cork and elsewhere.’ It is an argument that might find favour in the regions but O’Leary – and others in the past such as Kenny Jacobs of DAA – say those coming to Ireland want to come to Dublin.
‘That’s where the hotel accommodation is, that’s where the visitor attractions are, and if they can’t come to Dublin, our fares start rising and they’ll go to Manchester, they’ll go to London, they’ll go to Edinburgh,’ claims O’Leary.
It is a matter of opinion as to which competing argument holds more water.
Ryan has another problem, however. He is also in charge of climate change measures and aviation is a major polluter. With the EU confirming requirements to cut emissions by 90% by 2040, expansion of the airport seems counter-intuitive,
in that regard at least.
O’Leary doesn’t always get it right when it comes to the development of Dublin Airport either. He was a vocal opponent of the second terminal, claiming it would be a ‘white elephant’, totally unsuited to the requirements at the country’s largest airport.
While his argument now would be that something less expensive could have been built – and he refuses to use the facility, preferring the more basic first terminal – the capacity crisis at the airport would have had him screaming for it to be built if it hadn’t.
Part of the forward planning involved in the construction of the second terminal was an arrivals area for a train. Dublin is almost unique as a capital city in not having a train link to its main airport. Any time it has been suggested previously, O’Leary has protested loudly against the idea, saying it would be too expensive and telling people to get the bus instead.
Unfortunately, the Government has stepped back from the construction of a more extensive rail service in the capital, either underground or overground, and the costs of doing it now have become even more prohibitive.
The problem for the Government, though, is that O’Leary has joined a list of those who undermine it by focusing on the Greens and their policies as the weak link. Ryan has a target on his back and O’Leary is joining farmers, Independent TDs and others with the Greens in their sights as the bogeymen.
However, O’Leary, a truly successful businessman admired by those who either ignore or enjoy his bombast, has the louder voice that might carry more traction with voters to do the Greens even more reputational damage.