Sir, - The difficulties being suffered by our tourism industry cannot be laid at the doors of the foot-and-mouth outbreak or the downturn in the US economy. The analysis in your Editorial (July 30th), was incomplete.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Irish tourism weathered successive US downturns and other industry setbacks without hindering our ability to deliver (year-on-year) double-digit growth.
Equally, the outbreak of foot-and-mouth and the US recession have not hindered the 20 per cent year-on-year growth in traffic at Shannon Airport in the first quarter of this year. Similarly, the rapid growth at other UK airports situated right at the heart of the foot-and-mouth epidemic was unaffected.
Examples include Stansted, which has grown by 20 per cent in the first three months, Luton up 16 per cent, Liverpool up 21 per cent and Glasgow's Prestwick up 57 per cent.
The reason why traffic at these airports has continued to grow strongly is because they promoted lower costs and encouraged low-fare airlines such as Ryanair and others to open up new routes, add flights and stimulate rapid traffic growth even against an adverse economic backdrop.
This stimulus was missing at Dublin Airport, where Ms O'Rourke and the Aer Rianta monopoly have, for the last number of years, been pursuing a strategy of rapidly escalating costs, leading to higher air fares, a complete stagnation of new route development and traffic growth which is the real cause of the downturn in our tourism industry.
In the first three months of this year (during the worst of the foot-and-mouth) Ryanair's traffic grew by over 30 per cent. Almost 2 million additional visitors and tourists could and should have been travelling to and from Ireland this year, if only we had a Minister for Transport who put consumers first by promoting competition, lower prices and improved facilities at Dublin Airport, instead of protecting an inefficient monopoly at the expense of Irish consumers and Ireland's tourism industry.
Unfortunately for our tourism industry we're stuck with a Minister and a Department whose policy is to put the interests of the Aer Rianta monopoly first.
It is this monopoly protection policy that is damaging our tourism industry and ensuring that Ireland has lost 2 million new visitors this year to more competitive airports in the UK and Europe at a time when winning traffic and jobs in Ireland is even more important than it has ever been.
It's time that Ms O'Rourke changed her disastrous policy. Competition and low fares works for tourism, protecting monopolies and higher prices will continue to damage this vital Irish industry. - Yours, etc.,
Michael O'Leary, Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport.