The Irish budget airline Ryanair has warned the government that there will be about thousands of job losses for the aviation sector.
Ryanair asked Airline Climate Operations, Communications and Transportation Minister Eamon Ryan to explain why none of the 14 recommendations of the Aviation Task Force published this summer could be implemented.
Ryanair pointed out that the task force on aviation had recommended that the sector recover from the Covid-19 crash but two months later no progress was made.
They blamed the government for failing to implement task force recommendations to reduce capacity and connectivity to and out of Ireland this winter.
The airline claimed that if Minister Ryan did not take immediate action, it would lose more than 140,000 jobs in Irish aviation, 325,000 jobs in Irish tourism and thousands of jobs in the winter.
When updating the green list of countries allowed to travel abroad, Ryanair asked that countries like Germany, the UK, Denmark and Poland be included. They argued that in all of these countries the virus rate is lower than in Ireland, and a 14-day quarantine is mandatory if you want to go there for business or other purposes.
They complained that since July 1, many EU countries have allowed safe inter-EU air travel, but the Irish government has been reluctant to do so.
An airline spokesman said that Ireland’s connectivity with our largest EU trading partners in the UK and Germany was cut off by government. The mismanagement of Ireland’s Green List by the NPHET, with a ineffective, 14-day quarantine still keeping Ireland ‘closed to business’, he added.
He reminded that the unemployment rate is now 17% and hence the time for Irish businesses to return to work has passed. However, spokesperson said the economy could not recover if people are not able to fly to other business partners.
Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson called on the government to include in the green list countries that report fewer covid cases than Ireland, such as Germany and the UK.
Mr. Eddie said there would be an increase in Covid cases if people started flying to other countries, but people should learn to live with it.