Ryanair has made a legal challenge to the Government's decision to allow a second terminal to be built at Dublin airport.
The airline has taken proceedings in the High Court in a bid to overturn what it claimed was an unlawful decision to grant the state-owned Dublin Airport Authority permission to expand the facility.
Ryanair said it will be challenging the decision on competition and public procurement grounds under Article 82 and Article 86 of the European Treaty.
Chief Executive Michael O'Leary claimed the Government broke EU competition rules by awarding the second terminal to the Dublin Airport Authority.
"Our legal advisers are confident that this unlawful decision can be challenged and overturned in the Irish courts," he said. "Ryanair is taking this case because this is the only way we can end the queues, the waste, the inefficiency and the incompetence of the Dublin airport monopoly.
"Having spent over €500 million at Dublin over the past eight years on the spectacularly inefficient Pier C and the terminal extension, tourists and Irish consumers are still forced to endure queues of up to one hour at peak time, car parks that are miles away from the terminal building and short-term parking fees that were increased by 50 per cent on April 1st last with no economic justification."
Mr O'Leary said the experience of passengers departing from and arriving at Dublin Airport is awful.
"Dublin airport is comparable with the worst third world airports," he said. "It is wrong for Bertie Ahern to keep rewarding this incompetence, by allowing the same people who've made such a mess of the first terminal to build the second one, when there are 13 other parties who could build the terminal cheaper, more efficiently and provide passengers with competition and choice.
"We are confident that the courts will find in favour of consumers on this issue, in much the same way the courts brought about the deregulation of the Dublin taxi service in recent years."
The Government ended years of debate over the expansion of the overstretched Dublin Airport in May by announcing that a new terminal would be built by the Dublin Airport Authority, which runs the existing facility.