Flight tax amounts to ‘tourism suicide’

RYANAIR, the country’s largest airline, warned yesterday that the €10 flight tax was “tourism suicide” and was doing enormous damage to the economy.

The low fares airline is to cut its winter services out of Dublin and Shannon by taking one aircraft out of service at each of the two airports.

These craft will be transferred to more profitable destinations such as Belgium and Holland who do not have tourist taxes, or to other destinations such as Greece and Spain, where their governments recently scrapped tourist taxes and airport charges in order to promote tourism.