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Ryanair launch a second bid for Aer Lingus, government have been seeking to sell for months now. It is very uncomfortable for the whole company. Shareholders are getting a premium, government end with egg on faces and unions go apoplectic. Not alone that but Ireland’s free-marketeer nabs himself a decent monopoly on air travel out of the island and shedloads of headlines.
Not a bad day’s business
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Councillor bound to peace for insulting fellow FG activist
A NEWLY ELECTED Fine Gael councillor has been bound to the peace for 12 months for calling a fellow party member “a f****** scab”.
Noel O’Keefe gives a frankly stunning and sickeningly honest quote to the Cork Evening Echo. Is this a view into the mind of Irish politicians, or is it just one example of the issues that need to be tackled if we are to reform our political system? If there’s one thing you read this week, make it this quote.
Green members’ conference set for July
The debate on Lisbon is underway as the Green Party look at getting their meeting out of the way on 18 July – can we expect the fireworks and close vote of last time out or will the Greens take part on the Yes side this time out?
Average public worker earns more than €50,000 a year
Grist is added to the mill of An Bord Snip nua as the CSO figures on pay are released.
Is Charlie McCreevy in the running to lead the No campaign for Lisbon II? asks Jamie Smyth of The Irish Times.
I rely on Aer Lingus alot and would hate to see it go. Only flight into cork from where i live so I need them.
I have to say I have heard of some pretty odd stories from AL the oddest being two workers who were paid huge sums to do regular jobs and yet were still went on paid sick leave for a month so that they could work as electricians on a building development.
Two men are not all of Aer Lingus but would it happen in a regular private company. Would it happen in Ryan Air. Would it Fuc$.
Flexibility from both union and management will be required but the unions need to be congnisant that baggage handlers earning on average 70,000 euros per year are doing pretty well.
Aer Lingus workers and management need to start having more realistic wage targets if they want to keep their jobs because if Ryanair gets hold of them they will get an awful hop.
To me the only surprise is that O’Leary hasn’t tried to take over one of the banks. They’re cheap!
Whether this happens will depend on the European Commission. They turned it down the last time. I happened to have the opportunity to speak to a member of Neeli Kroes’s cabinet. Kroes is the competition commissioner. Her cabinet member that I spoke to is a competition lawyer and he explained that the Alitalia merger with Air One (both Italian based) was allowed because there is an Eu competition rule that states that the competition question remains national unless one of the merging companies makes more than a third of its turnover outside the state’s borders. It is likely that Aer Lingus doesn’t but that Ryanair does make a third of its revenue outside Ireland, so this would remain an issue for the commission.
The official explained that when they examine airline competition they not only examine say the portion of business that the merging companies have at a particular airport, they also examine the routes to see what percentage of their traffic is on routes where they currently compete. I presume that this wouldn’t have changed significantly since the last time the commission examined Aer lingus and Ryanair – though I could be wrong there because certainly both airlines have dropped a number of routes.
I also asked him if the ownership structure of Aer Lingus wasn’t compromising competition (With Ryanair holding almost 30%). He said that the commission also examined this and found that Ryanair’s ownership didn’t have significant influence on the operations of Aer Lingus.
Whether the commission would have significantly altered its approach to these things in the wake of the financial crisis is a good question. The commission may have taken the view that when the EU faces a prolonged global recession that it is better to have consolidation so that there are fewer players, but bigger players in the Eu scene who are capable of surviving a long period of extremely tough trading conditions.
I live near Dublin Airport. Once opon a time there used to good employers in North County Dublin (the farmers being an exception) and Aer Lingus was one of them. With Michael O’Leary and the vulture capitalists all has changed and we have bought into the Irish dream – wealth for ourselves and slavery for everyone else. If this juggernaut is not stopped now the revelations of last nights prime special will look like normal daily life for all workers in Ireland in a few years time.
I wonder is this Ryanair’s plan of getting transatlantic business.
simon, it could be. Aer Lingus is a brand in the US much more so than RyanAir.