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Union President says takeover of Aer Lingus will be bad for the country

“The threatened takeover of Aer Lingus by Ryanair vindicates SIPTU’s stand in opposing the privatisation of our national airline from the outset”, said SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor, in response to the announcement by Ryanair’s Chief Executive Michael O’Leary that his company had acquired over 16 per cent of Aer Lingus and was making a bid for total control.

“Anyone with a titter of wit could have foreseen this development”, said Mr O’Connor .

“It makes very good business sense for Michael O’Leary and his heavily financed Ryanair. If they can pull it off it will enable Ryanair to take out its principal competitor on their main routes, acquire the critically valuable Heathrow ‘slots’, consolidate market dominance and dictate whatever price they like to airports, with obvious long term adverse consequences for workers and the travelling public alike.

“Are we really expected to believe that a highly resourced state apparatus and the Government itself could not have foreseen this sort of development, which a mere trade union like ourselves warned against long ago. Ironically we now have a measure undertaken in the name of competition which - if Ryanair pulls off this takeover - will have precisely the opposite effect.

“Whatever else Michael O’Leary is, he is not a fool. Apart from moving to take out the competition, he is also seeking to close off the possibility of another major airline doing so instead. All of this is a consequence of the nonsensical decision to privatise Aer Lingus in the first place,” he concluded.