Ryanair is to seek a High Court injunction requiring the return of documents seized from a raid by the competition watchdog, at the request of its Italian counterpart, from the airline’s Dublin Airport offices.
On Friday, Mr Justice Max Barrett fixed three days next month for a hearing of the Ryanair injunction application along with another application to inspect a document exchanged between the two national competition authorities.
There will also be a hearing of an application by the Irish competition authority to strike out Ryanair’s motion.
The court heard a decision is still awaited from the Italian authority, the Autorità Garante Della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) on its investigation of complaints from two Italian travel agency associations and a consumer association.
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It is claimed that Ryaniar, through its online ticket sales system, precludes travel agencies from purchasing tickets via its website, where the lowest fares are available, and directs them instead to a global distribution system.
This affects competition and amounts to an abuse of its dominant market position, it is claimed.
Ryanair denies the claims.
The judge was told on Friday by Stephen Byrne BL, for Ryanair, and Jonathan Newman SC, for the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), that dates in November had been agreed between the parties for the hearing of the applications.
The judge adjourned the matters until November.
In February 2024, following a request for assistance to the CCPC from the AGCM into its investigation, some 30 officers, including some from the AGCM, searched the airline’s Airside offices at the airport on March 8th, 2024.
Legal proceedings by Ryanair followed both here and in Italy and are continuing in both jurisdictions.
