Dublin Airport flights will rocket to over €1,000 this Christmas if the ‘absurd’ passenger cap is not lifted, Michael O’Leary has said.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, the Ryanair CEO once again hit out at the Transport Minister Eamon Ryan over the cap.

He said the ‘insane and stupid’ cap would see Ireland losing out on thousands of tourism jobs as airlines move their planes to more welcoming cities.

He called on Minister Ryan to either instruct airport operator DAA to ignore the cap – or to pass legislation to bypass the planning process and remove the cap.

“If we had a Minister for Transport who was modestly interested in aviation or even modestly interested in economic growth and development - which his own aviation policy is at the heart of - he would fix this,” said Mr O’Leary.

Passenger cap

He said the airport would be welcoming 40 million passengers within three or four years if the cap is removed.

“Tourism accounts for about 10% or 12% of Ireland's GDP,” he said. “About 120,000 jobs in this country.

“We're opening new hotels, we're developing new restaurants, the Wild Atlantic Way and all of these tourism facilities need continuing growth in visitor numbers and that can only be done in Ireland through the continuation of low-cost air access.”

'We'll make a fortune'

He said the ‘bizarre thing’ about the dispute is that Ryanair is set to “make a fortune” out of it.

“If we're not allowed to add in those 270,000 extra seats at Christmas, we'll put them somewhere else – they'll go to Spain or they'll go to the UK, they'll go to Italy,” he said.

“But the airfares in and out of Dublin this Christmas will be €1,000 return – they’ll be €500 each way.

“We're going back to the old days of flag carrier monopolies.”

Growth

Mr O’Leary said he met with Minister Ryan in early March and told him that Ryanair is capable of growing its traffic in Dublin by one-third over the next six years.

“I told him we'll put another 10 or 15 aircraft into Ireland in Dublin, Cork and Shannon and we’ll create about another 7,000 jobs here in Ireland,” he said.

“We haven't heard back from him. I mean, he hasn't even been back to say no.”

Ryanair is due to receive 49 new aircraft by next summer and Mr O’Leary said the airline would be basing some of them in Dublin if the cap was lifted.

“The question I put to Eamon Ryan at our meeting was, ‘how many of these aircraft do you want me to put in Dublin, Cork and Shannon?’” he said.

“He's there giving you a kind of gormless smile, you know? Nothing.

“I would want to put five aircraft in Dublin next year. I could open about 25 new routes and we could grow traffic by about a million passengers.

“Yet while the Minister for Transport and his Green Minister for Tourism both sit on their hands, smiling gormlessly at us, these aircraft and these routes and these jobs are going to be exported elsewhere to Europe.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr O’Leary also labelled the Aer Lingus pilot’s strike threat ‘industrial blackmail’ and said Ireland should be turning back refugees that arrive from other EU countries.