Ryanair staff won’t go hungry

ABOUT 500 Ryanair staff who’ll head over this autumn to the new HQ beside the Airside Retail Park at Swords, Co Dublin, won’t have to travel far for nibbles.

There’s all sorts of culinary delights nearby – from a drive-through McDonald’s to a Starbucks, TGI Fridays and an O’Brien’s.

And as if that’s not enough, the owners of the retail park, Irish Life Assurance, have divebombed the local council with a number of planning applications to build additional standalone cafes and a restaurant.

The council isn’t amused, however. It had actually opposed the development of the restaurant that’s now a McDonald’s and permission was only granted on appeal to An Bord Pleanala.

The restaurant opened last autumn. Now Irish Life Assurance has asked the council to approve separate permissions for a new drive through restaurant and two cafes. The council has just rejected all of them.

In relation to the drive through, it says the proposed restaurant in the car park would represent a “haphazard form of development, remote and dislocated from existing retail units”.

All this is unlikely to bother Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, who likes to pop out to the gym of a lunchtime. Staff, meanwhile, will have to content themselves with a Big Mac and a browse around B&Q.