Mr. Michael O'Leary:

As the person who was most virulently opposed to unionisation for 20 years in Ryanair, I think the past five years have demonstrated that we have learned from the unions but the unions have also learned from us. We went through Covid, which was an existential crisis. We did not fire everybody, which is what most of our unionised competitors did. We kept people employed. We did agree pay cuts with pilots, cabin crew and engineers across the board, because it was the only way that we were going to survive through that, but we kept everybody current. We also put in place a five-year pay deal that involved pay restoration plus agreed pay increases over the next couple of years. As Mr. Wilson said, they have been agreed with over 90% of our people. We have learned to work with unions. The unions have learned to work with us. We will not put up with some of the nonsense that they go on with but thankfully they go on with very little nonsense and they will equally say that they will not put up with a lot of the nonsense that I go on with when I have learned that maybe a little less nonsense out of me goes a long way too.

We have learned. We have very good businesslike working relationships with 90% of our unions. The Irish pilots are still the only ones who have not agreed a restoration and we hope that as a result of the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, intervention next week that we will get that done. We would like to restore their pay before Christmas. All we have said to them is that we will restore their pay the minute they agree to the same sort of pay deals as those to which all their pilot colleagues across Europe have agreed. What is not to like?