O’Leary on why he’d tell farmers to turn their tractors around if they protested at airport

If farmers take their protests to Dublin Airport, Michael O’Leary, who turned 63 last week (which, he says, is the new 42), will be telling them to “turn their tractors around and head for Kildare Street”.

In recent weeks, farmers have skirted around protesting at Cork Airport, with their disquiet over pressure to reduce their emissions, while calls are being made for the cap on passenger numbers at Dublin Airport to be lifted.

However, according to O’Leary, it’s the wrong protest.

“I’d say turn the tractors around and head for Kildare Street, it’s outside Government Buildings you need to be protesting, not outside Cork Airport.”

In light of the European farmers’ protests, he says, the EU is “suddenly beginning to realise that an awful lot of environmental rubbish they have been talking for the last 20 years is now damaging farming and damaging tourism.

“They [farmers] should be protesting outside the Department of Agriculture or in Brussels with the French farmers, German farmers and the Belgian farmers.”

Any associated rise in emissions from passenger numbers, according to O’Leary, would be very modest because of the efficiency of the new aircraft and new technologies, a view disputed by environmentalists.

“Ireland has to compete for additional tourists,” he says.

“We’re going to take delivery of 400 new aircraft in the next decade. Do we place those aircraft in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, and they get all the benefits of the tourism with a very modest rise in emissions, or does Ireland share in that growth?

“Because the growth is what drives jobs, it drives income and then ultimately that will help to buy the food farmers are producing.”

O’Leary — who has been criticised in some quarters for his views on climate change and in the past said he didn’t accept the connection between carbon consumption and climate change — said: “You have to have regard for climate change, but the point I repeatedly make is the climate has been changing for 10 billion years and will continue to change.

“I have very little faith in what they euphemistically call ‘climate change scientists’,” he says.

Maintaining his strident views on the matter, O’Leary says: “The idea that we go around in Ireland penalising ourselves, our farmers or our tourism industry, and that will have any impact on climate change is simply false. It won’t.

“We have a bunch of green ministers running around strangling the Irish economy and economic growth, while the Chinese are still opening up coal-powered fire stations and the Germans have re-opened their coal and lignite mines because of the energy crisis.”

While O’Leary said he does think Ireland needs to decarbonise, he described potential measures such as reducing the national herd as “simply absurd”.

“If anything, we should increase the herd and become more efficient at producing high-quality food,” he says. “Because when all is said and done, one of the reasons the greens are getting voted out of office across Europe is people want high-quality food, they want efficient services. We are going to travel more in the next decade or two but the airlines have to invest in new technology aircraft where we burn less fuel.”