Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary warned politicians tonight that he needed Hangar 6 at Dublin Airport within two weeks before he moved 300 jobs elsewhere in Europe.
The airline chief executive told a cross-party delegation he was already in talks with two other governments about opening a new maintenance facility for his airline.
He said Tánaiste Mary Coughlan had to move swiftly to get Aer Lingus out of the hangar to secure the hi-tech positions.
Out-of-work engineers from the former SR Technics site earlier marched through Dublin city over their futures.
“If the Tánaiste wants these jobs, get us Hangar 6 within the next two weeks, and if you don’t, I understand,” Mr O’Leary said at an Oireachtas Transport committee.
The Ryanair chief executive, Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller, DAA chief executive Declan Collier and the chief executive of the IDA, Barry O’Leary, appeared before the committee this afternoon to discuss the issue.
Labour TD Tommy Broughan accused the businessman of acting like a spoilt child and waving a rattle and throwing tantrums because he was not getting his own way.
Pressure has mounted on the Government since Mr O’Leary announced he could have created 500 skilled jobs in Dublin if he was given the facility when he first approached the Department of Enterprise more than a year ago.
The Ryanair boss maintains his only condition is that he would not deal with DAA, but stressed Ms Coughlan did little to intervene. More than 1,000 workers lost their jobs when the SR Technics plant shut down.
In January Aer Lingus moved in as tenant and last night revealed plans to house a new centralised staff operations centre for Aer Lingus comprising maintenance stores, technical stores, operations control, flight operations and cabin operations.
Mr O’Leary said although he has no beef with the former state airline’s plans, he stressed they were not creating any jobs. He said someone at Government level had to tell DAA to release the facility.
“Alternatively, the Government owns 24 per cent of Aer Lingus, I own 29 per cent of Aer Lingus, and I will happily give the Government a proxy over my 29 per cent for the Tánaiste to then call an EGM of Aer Lingus and with our 54% of voting power she can simply instruct Aer Lingus to get the hell out of Hangar 6,” he told the committee.
Mr O’Leary also released 12 months of correspondence between Ryanair, the Tánaiste and the IDA up to February 10th.
He said that, despite making lots of promises to co-operate and support the project, the Government did not lift one finger to help his airline and let the site go to Aer Lingus.
In a statement this evening, Fine Gael transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd accused the Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, of "demolishing the prospects of delivering 300 high-spec Ryanair jobs to Dublin".
"Michael O’Leary has conducted a devastating critique of the Government’s ‘do nothing’ attitude to the 300 potential Ryanair jobs and Ireland’s unemployment crisis," he said.
“The Tánaiste and her Government have failed utterly to prioritise job creation . . . the Tánaiste has failed to act after more than year of correspondence, and failed to communicate with the DAA about Ryanair’s interest in Hangar 6," Mr O'Dowd said.
He accused the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey of washing his hands of the matter.
Additional reporting PA