Seconds out... it’s O’Leary versus Ryan, Round 3

RYANAIR chief Michael O’Leary has continued his political attack on Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, issuing an open letter saying other EU airports are now ‘laughing’ at Ireland’s traffic cap at Dublin Airport.

However, a prominent Green TD has hit back saying people are decent and ‘don’t like to see that kind of abuse’.

Over the past few weeks, Mr O’Leary has strongly criticised the Government and Mr Ryan for what he said was a failure to raise the traffic cap at Dublin Airport from 32 million passengers a year to 40 million.

He has called Mr Ryan, right, ‘idiotic’ and has strongly criticised his performance as Transport Minister.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that Mr Ryan is not an idiot in response to Mr O’Leary’s comments, with Mr Ryan calling his remarks ‘personally abusive’.

However, Mr O’Leary has now doubled down on his criticism, with an open letter. He wrote: ‘Dear Eamon, despite your almost four year tenure as Ireland’s Minister for Transport, it is clear you either have no idea what your own Government’s national aviation policy is, or you are determined to frustrate this policy. I enclose herewith an extract of your own aviation policy.

‘Lamentably you have failed to take any action when an arbitrary and untenable traffic cap of 32 million passengers now means that Dublin Airport and Ireland’s aviation industry cannot grow for at least three to four years while you abrogate responsibility for national aviation to a local council in Fingal.’

IN AN open letter responding to Michael O’Leary last night, Eamon Ryan said he ‘fundamentally’ disagreed with the Ryanair boss.

The Transport Minister wrote: ‘Throughout this whole period, you have written many letters that have been highly personalised, inaccurate and inflammatory. I have invited you, through your executives, to meet with me, to discuss any issues you have face-toface. Those invitations have never once been taken up.’ The Green Party leader said the contention that he was not involved in solving the queuing crisis at Dublin Airport was ‘completely false’ and that it was ‘wrong’ to assert that he was not present in Dublin to address the problem of drones causing disruption at the airport.

‘The truth is I engaged directly and effectively to ensure that systems were put in place to reduce the threat of illegal drone activity in and around the airport. Dublin Airport now has clearance to use anti-drone technology and has the legal right to jam their frequencies or even take them down,’ he said.

On the passenger cap, Mr Ryan wrote: ‘You know as Minister for Transport I cannot intervene in the planning process, including the application seeking an extension of the existing passenger cap at Dublin Airport. That would be wholly inappropriate and would mean that we had not learnt the lessons of the past.’