Quit if you can’t handle loudmouth me – O’Leary
TRANSPORT Minister Eamon Ryan is to meet Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, after accusing him of being ‘personally abusive’.
Mr Ryan said he would ‘set the record straight’ during a meeting with Mr O’Leary today, one week after the Ryanair boss launched a personal broadside against him in a row over passenger caps at Dublin Airport. Mr O’Leary said Mr Ryan and Tourism Minister Catherine Martin were ‘dunces’ for failing to act on the airline’s demands to remove a cap limiting Dublin Airport to 32 million passengers per year. Mr O’Leary said the Green Party politicians should raise the passenger cap or leave politics. Mr Ryan has said comments from Mr O’Leary and his company’s social media posts in recent weeks had been ‘personally abusive’. He said he would use an upcoming meeting to ‘set the record straight on a couple of things that he may be misguided’ about adding: ‘I don’t think there’ll be any problem on a personal level.’
Asked if he would address Mr O’Leary’s insults, Mr Ryan said: ‘That doesn’t really bother me one way or the other.’
Ryanair has said the airport cap limits its plan to grow Irish traffic by 50% by 2030. While it expects to grow traffic at airports in Cork, Shannon and Knock, it cannot expand in Dublin due to a limit of 32 million passengers per year.
Mr O’Leary said at a press conference in Dublin last week: ‘I can’t imagine when I’ve ever been personally abusive.
‘I’ve said he’s [Eamon Ryan] incompetent. I don’t think that’s personally abusive, it’s a statement of fact. I think calling him a dunce is fair, but if he’s that thinskinned or that upset by personal abuse, I have two suggestions: One, do something useful and lift the cap. Or two, maybe politics isn’t for you if you can’t handle the occasional barb from some loudmouth like me.’ Mr O’Leary said he would ask Mr Ryan ‘when he plans to take action to scrap Dublin’s absurd traffic cap by intervening as he did in the Shannon LNG planning process in 2022’.