Ryanair will not use the proposed second terminal at Dublin airport if Siptu are granted a share in operating the new facility, the carrier warned today.
Stepping up the pressure on the Government to make a decision on the second terminal Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary claimed today the delay is costing the economy up to 5,000 jobs and millions in lost tourist revenue each year.
The Ryanair boss said he did not want a terminal built by the Dublin Airport Authority, which runs the existing terminal. If the authority ran the new terminal, Ryanair's expansion would be much more modest - between 500,000 and one million extra passengers.
"You cannot have a competing terminal where the same group runs both," Mr O'Leary told a press conference in Dublin today.
Asked if the airline would use the terminal if Siptu was a shareholder, Mr O'Leary replied Ryanair "wouldn't go near the place".
The airline claims it will bring five million extra passengers a year through Dublin if a second, competing terminal is built at the airport. Mr O'Leary said the airline would not be bidding to build the terminal. "We have no interest in owning it or building it, we just want to use it," he said.
He warned that even if a decision was made in the next week or the next month, Dublin Airport would not have a second terminal before 2007.
"We have been fiddling and faddling, dithering and dathering for the last two years. "It's time we had a second, a third and indeed a fourth terminal," he said.
In October 2003, 13 bids were made to build the new terminal at no cost to the taxpayer. Mr O'Leary said he favours a second terminal run by a different operator and competing for business with the existing facility at the airport.
"It's 2005 and not only do we not have a terminal, we don't have a decision on a terminal," Mr O'Leary said.
The chief executive compared the airport to Gatwick, south of London, which has a turnover of 30 million passengers through two terminals and one runway.
Dublin has a capacity of 16 million, which is less than Stansted Airport in Essex, Mr O'Leary said. He said that Dublin Airport did not need a second runway but did require a second terminal so that passengers were not subjected to "the black hole of Calcutta".
The company is offering 100,000 free flights to passengers who e-mail a "keep your promise" message to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.