Mick Clifford: Ryanair's O’Leary on a flight of fancy

People will look back unkindly on Michael O'Leary who seems to think aviation only plays an insignificant role in the climate crisis

 Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary appears to accept that carbon emissions are doing serious damage to the environment but refuses to see the aviation sector as a big culprit.

Mick O’Leary was giving it welly again this week. Every so often he emerges from his Ryanair office to bestow tablets of wisdom on the nation. In doing so he divides the nation, and all other nations, into two categories — those who are willing to assist in boosting Ryanair’s bottom line and those who are not. Once you cop that that is the entirety of his agenda it can be wholly entertaining to sit back and listen to him prattle on.

Doing so last Wednesday as he patiently explained to Claire Byrne on RTÉ why the world revolves around his company, my mind shot back nearly 26 years. In 1998, as Ryanair under O’Leary was about to seriously take off, the company ran into industrial relations problems. A group of sixty baggage handlers — from a staff complement of 1,000 — went on strike over the company’s refusal to recognise unions. (There were other issues but that was at the heart of it).