A group of 15 boy scouts and their seven leaders were forced to travel for 21 hours by land and sea from Dinard in France home to Longford after a Ryanair flight which they had booked was unable to take them.
Yesterday, Father Tom Healy, who was one of the leaders, said they were meant to fly out of Dinard at around 2 p.m. on Sunday. The Ryanair flight was meant to have 125 seats but a smaller plane arrived with only 80 seats.
Ryanair said it would fly them home on Wednesday but Father Healy said: "We didn't want to be delayed for three days so we protested about that." The airline then re-routed them and they left at 5 p.m. by bus to St Malo where they boarded a ferry to Weymouth in England. From there, they had a four-and-a-half hour coach journey to Stansted Airport. They took a 10.15 a.m. flight to Dublin and reached Longford about 2 p.m. yesterday.
"Our main anger is with Ryanair, as first they said we wouldn't be able to get a flight until Wednesday and we wondered why the young people were left behind. Then when we got to Stansted we asked for food vouchers but were refused," Father Healy said.
Last night, Mr Michael Crowley, commercial director of Ryanair said: "We apologise sincerely for the inconvenience. There is no question we regret it and we send our profuse apologies."
He said it had never happened on the Dinard route before and it had been running for a year. Due to the busy weekend, they had been unable to obtain a larger plane.
As for the food vouchers, he said that if passengers had a delay of over three hours, they were entitled to them and he would be contacting staff in Stansted to see what happened.
"It was a complete mess and I hope it will never happen again," Mr Crowley said.