Ryanair: Irish Govt must deliver 'change & reform' as jobs go to Germany
23-Mar-2011 Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (23rd Mar) opened its new maintenance facility at Frankfurt Hahn Airport and called on the new Irish Govt to deliver on promised ‘change and reform’ to ensure that no Govt departmental incompetence will again prevent jobs for being created or retained in Ireland.
Ryanair's new €25m facility will sustain 200 new engineering jobs in Frankfurt Hahn. These high paid engineering jobs were the remainder of those lost by the Fianna Fáil Govt and the incompetence of the Departments of Transport and Enterprise who rejected Ryanair's 2010 offers to create up to 600 jobs in Dublin Airport's Hangar 6.
Rather than support Ryanair's job creation Noel Dempsey (Transport) and Mary Coughlan (Enterprise) stood idly by while the DAA monopoly leased the Hangar 6 facility to Aer Lingus, which, over 12 months later, has still not created one new engineering job while Ryanair has created over 500 new engineering jobs in Frankfurt Hahn and Glasgow Prestwick Airports.
Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said:
"The opening of Ryanair's new maintenance hangar in Frankfurt Hahn is a further significant investment in Ryanair's safety and maintenance. We are delighted to create up to 200 new engineering jobs in our new Frankfurt Hahn facility.
"The tragedy of today's development is that these jobs could have been created in an employment black-spot in North County Dublin, where SRT made over 1,000 engineers redundant when Hangar 6 closed. Hangar 6 is now used by Aer Lingus as their Head Office and no new maintenance business or engineering jobs have been created.
"We hope the new Govt will deliver on their promise of 'change and reform' to ensure that incompetence in government departments is weeded out so that all possible jobs, especially high skilled high paid jobs such as those offered by Ryanair, remain in Ireland."