An inspiring success story - Ryanair’s €17bn Boeing deal

This week, Finance Minister Michael Noonan is in Europe trying to get support for proposals to refinance IMF loans. If he is successful, and the indications are that he may be, the deal could save us up to €400m every year until the debt is cleared. This would be a significant prize, one that would add to the growing sense of optimism around the economy.

However, Mr Noonan’s adventures pale in significance when compared with the €17bn deal announced by Ryanair this week. The airline has ordered 100 Boeing 737 aircraft and says it intends to buy another 100 when the first 100 are delivered. This is, even by today’s multi-billion standards, a pretty big deal. That the organisation placing the spectacular order was once, and not so long ago, derided as “Tipperary Air” by begrudgers posing as sophisticates must give all at Ryanair, especially CEO Michael O’Leary, particular satisfaction. Never shy of calling a spade something far more colourful, Mr O’Leary’s assessment of those critics now would be as forthright as it might be entertaining.

Ryanair is the Irish business success of our time, it has created tens of thousands of jobs and — it is easy to forget this now — eased the difficulties of emigration for generations once exploited by a semi-state monopoly. Mr O’Leary has been exemplary too in that he, unlike other self-made plutocrats, looks the taxman in the eye and pays his taxes in the country of his birth. All in all, an inspiring success story.