Tánaiste To Meet Ryanair Chief

It has emerged that Tánaiste Mary Coughlan's office has contacted Ryanair to arrange a meeting with the airline's boss tomorrow to discuss plans to create 300 aviation maintenance jobs at Dublin Airport.

A time for the meeting will be confirmed in the morning after the Taniaste yesterday defended a decision that eventually led to the moving of 200 jobs to Glasgow by Ryanair's Chief Executive Michael O'Leary.

Minister Coughlan had been accused of badly handling negotiations with Ryanair over an offer by the airline 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 had demanded they would only provide the crucial jobs if Minister Coughlan made it possible for the airline to absolved of dealing directly 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 had insisted 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.

Yesteday, Ryanair 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 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.

(D/BMcC)