Flying in the face of the critics

■ In exulting in Michael O’Leary’s current difficulty with union recognition, spare a thought for the highly regulated and unionised conditions governing air travel pre Ryanair and the aforementioned Mr O’Leary.

The cost of commuting by air was prohibitive; the preserve of the rich. Our emigrants travelling to the UK were compelled to ‘take the boat’. Later, when conditions improved and our emigrants began to travel by air, they were exposed to the regular ambush of threatened strike action at Christmas time and Easter, the two times each year when our emigrants would most likely be returning home to their families.

The unions didn’t have to concern themselves with the plight of the travelling public, as all of their members were already in well-paid, secure and pensionable jobs at home in Ireland.

Thankfully, de-regulation permitted competition and the ‘low-cost airline’, with much lower air fares, a huge increase in air travel and holiday destinations. Such is the story of Ryanair that it made air travel available to ordinary working families, as well as to the families of the temporarily unemployed. To be relevant, unions must engage in periodic industrial action, note the Luas, Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus. Is this to be the future for Ryanair?

Accordingly, and in view of what went on in the past, is the current schadenfreude in relation to Mr O’Leary more than a little misplaced?

Mick O’Brien Springmount, Kilkenny