Politics

Michael O’Leary seeks to alarm UK voters over Brexit ‘lunatics’

UK exit from EU could result in run on sterling, says Ryanair chief executive

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary and AIB chairman Richard Pym, at a conference on Brexit run by Bloomberg in Dublin on Friday. Photograph: Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg
Sat May 14 2016 - 01:00

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said pro-Europe UK business figures should prepare to petrify British voters in the run-up to next month’s Brexit referendum to secure victory.

Mr O’Leary said he hopes polls will be close in the final stages of the campaign before the June 23rd vote, to “motivate the more sensible people to get off their backsides” and lobby for continued membership.

“I’d want to terrify the life out of everybody that there’s a real danger the lunatics on the “leave” side are going to win,” Mr Leary told a conference on Brexit run by Bloomberg in Dublin yesterday.

He discounted suggestions that his involvement, as an Irish man, in the “remain” campaign, would antagonise voters, saying Ryanair had a big interest in the matter as its UK business was much bigger than in Ireland.

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While he said a UK exit could result in an economic hit to the country’s economy and a near-term “run” on sterling, he said that both would recover over the medium term. Indeed, he said immediate sterling weakness against the euro on the back of a vote to exit the EU would be reversed as a “queue” of other member counties seeking to leave the union. Seat sale In the event of voters deciding to leave the EU, the company would announce a seat sale in the UK the day after. “There’s no event, good or bad, that doesn’t warrant a very large Ryanair seat sale,” he said.

Longer term, however, Ryanair would likely invest less in the UK as a result of such an outcome, he said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the same conference that Ireland will remain in the EU irrespective of the outcome of the UK referendum. He promised to lobby only Irish people in the UK to remain in the union.

“I want to clearly acknowledge that the UK’s decision on EU membership is, of course, solely a matter for UK voters,” said Mr Kenny. “That said, I think it is widely accepted that as the UK’s closest neighbour, Ireland has a unique perspective and interest in the outcome of the referendum.”

He said he and Government Ministers, who plan to make a number of visits to the UK in the weeks before the vote, will only focus on convincing Irish people there, who amount to almost one million people.

“We would see the UK leaving the EU as a considerable concern because successive economic studies show that the impact on Ireland would be proportionately greater than on other EU member states,” Mr Kenny said.