Ryanair tycoon’s tirade at Fine Gael pre-Budget business breakfast against right to strike, public sector workers and RTÉ

RYANAIR BOSS Michael O’Leary told a Fine Gael pre-Budget business breakfast fundraiser last week that gardaí who took industrial action should be sacked and strike-breaking private bus operators should be given a free run in bus lanes during transport disputes.

The event was attended by Finance Minister Michael Noonan and other Fine Gael Cabinet ministers at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin.

Noonan even introduced the Ryanair boss as “Ireland’s leading businessman” and “Ireland’s leading altogether decent person” when he introduced him to the audience on Wednesday morning.

The Sunday Independent reports that “several sources” confirm details of the diatribe attended by 200 business leaders and others at the invite-only event only a few hundred yards from the Dáil.

Adopting the mantle of a modern-day William Martin Murphy of 1913 Lockout infamy, the super-rich airline boss laid into the public sector, transport workers and the right to take industrial action, exalting US President Ronald Reagan for the mass sacking of more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

Asked about gardaí possibly taking industrial action about outstanding pay restoration claims, O’Leary discarded his newly-cultivated ‘softer’ public persona and told his select audience in forthright terms:

“If somebody doesn’t show up to work I’d sack them, and if it means we’ve to sack 4,000 guards, I would sack all 4,000 guards.”

O’’Leary also attacked RTÉ in a bizarre rant as part of a Q&A “for over 40 minutes and to rapturous applause from those in attendance”, including Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar, Housing Minister Simon Coveney and Education Minister Richard Bruton, the Sunday Independent says.

Describing RTÉ as a “rat-infested North Korean union shop”, the motormouth millionaire self-publicist moaned:

“I can’t turn on the bloody 9 O’Clock News without having to see Ingrid Miley’s face giving me the latest spew from the Trotskyites and all the rest of it.”

He also called for the privatisation of the health service and an end to the “nonsensical pandering to bloody cyclists”.

According to the Sunday Independent report, Michael O’Leary is not enamoured by Sinn Féin’s proposals for a fair taxation system that wants everyone to pay their fair share, including the most wealthy in society:

“The Ryanair boss joked that he was not invited to Sinn Féin events because they do not want to eat with people they plan to ‘tax the s**t out of’.”

A spokesperson for Ryanair has confirmed that O’Leary spoke at a business breakfast for Fine Gael during the week “and will be speaking at one for Fianna Fail in November”.