MICHAEL O'LEARY,
Sir, - John Burke, chief executive of Aer Rianta, is completely wrong (Opinion, January 9th) when he states: "It makes no sense to focus only on airport charges when considering how to increase tourists numbers". But then, as the head of the high-cost, Government-owned airport monopoly, he would say that, wouldn't he?
Mr Burke and Aer Rianta (ably assisted by their monopoly minders in the Department of Public Enterprise) have turned down Ryanair's offer of 1.8 million additional seats and a guaranteed 1 million new passengers to and from Ireland in 2002 on 10 low-fare European routes simply because they don't want to offer a low-cost-base or efficient facilities to low-fare airlines such as Ryanair. The only reason why these routes and low fares have been lost to other lower-cost European airports is because of the high costs at the Aer Rianta airport monopoly.
Irish tourism has been one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy since 1985, when competition and lower fares made low-cost visitor access to Ireland from the UK a reality. Ryanair can repeat this success with a wide range of low-fare routes to Ireland from continental Europe, but not while we have a Minister and a Department whose sole policy in this area is to protect Aer Rianta 's monopoly and ignore consumer interest or the growth of our national tourism industry.
It makes perfect sense to focus only on airport charges when considering how to increase tourist numbers, because it's only the high costs at the Aer Rianta monopoly airports that is preventing Ryanair delivering millions of new visitors on low fare routes from Europe. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL O'LEARY, Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport.