Tanaiste On Defendsive Over Ryanair Move

The Taniaste has defended a decision that eventually led to the moving of 200 jobs to Glasgow by Ryanair.

This morning, Minister Mary Coughlan (pictured) defended her handling of a Ryanair offer to create 500 jobs on the former SR Technics site in North Dublin.

It emerged that Ryanair had offered to create 500 jobs on the SR Technics site after it closed last year with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

However, the budget airline demanded that they would only provide the crucial jobs if Minister Coughlan made it possible for the airline to not have to deal with the Dublin Airport Authority, with whom the airline have a long running dispute.

Correspondence released by the airline after they made the initial offer to the Tánaiste, showed that Mary Coughlan replied that direct discussion with the airline and the DAA was unavoidable.

Six months on Ryanair replied to announce that 200 of the jobs were to go to Glasgow.

Today, Ryanair have also launched an attack on the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, accusing him of misleading the Daíl over his defence of the €10 flight tax.

Last week, Minister Dempsey said he believed the decline in passenger numbers at Irish airports could not be attributed to the imposition of the travel tax and that the economic recession led to the significant impact on consumer demand for discretionary air travel throughout Europe.

However, Ryanair's Michael O'Leary has this morning accused Mr Dempsey of either "not having a clue what he is talking about" or deliberately misleading the Dáil.

"It is time for Minister Dempsey and this Govt to recognise that their €10 tourist tax has been a disaster for Irish tourism, as has their policy of protecting the DAA monopoly, and awarding it a 40% increase in passenger fees, at a time when all other EU Governments and airports are scrapping tourist taxes and/or reducing airport fees, in many cases to zero," he said.

See: Ryanair Hangar Lands At Prestwick

(DW/BMcC)