There has been an analogy made in some quarters that Ryanair's bid to take over Aer Lingus represents a battle between the old and the new Ireland, writes Mary Raftery
Aer Lingus is predictably cast as the "old" - backward, union-ridden, inefficient, monolithic. Ryanair is the people's champion, the breaker of monopolies, forward-looking, flexible, focused on profit and proud of it.
However, to those who are happy to identify with Ryanair as typifying the new Ireland, the comments of Mr Justice Thomas Smyth in the High Court during the summer might come as a sharp shock.
"There are occasions," he said, "of which this is regretfully I think the second in my career as a judge I have had to do so, to say things that I found extremely difficult but which could not be left unsaid."
Ryanair had gone to the High Court alleging that pilots were being bullied and intimidated by their pro-trade union colleagues. The case was taken against the trade unions Impact, IALPA and BALPA (the Irish and British airline pilots associations). The bullying pilots were hiding behind aliases on a chat website, Ryanair claimed, and the court should order their true identities be revealed.
Instead, in an unusually perfect example of being hoist by one's own petard, it was Ryanair itself which was found to be the bully.
The background is as follows: in 2004, Ryanair was in the process of switching its aircraft from Boeing 737-200s to the more up-to-date 737-800s, and pilots needed to be retrained on the newer planes.
Ryanair wrote to all its pilots on November 12th, 2004, informing them that the company would refund them the training costs (€15,000) only if certain conditions were met. One of these was that should "Ryanair be compelled to engage in collective bargaining with any pilot association or trade union within five years of commencement of your conversion training, then you will be liable to repay the full training costs".
The letter's next sentence is an example of the famous Ryanair cheekiness which we all, for some unfathomable reason, appear to find so endearing. The pilots were told that "naturally this does not and will not affect your right to freely join any trade union or association of your choice."
Mr Justice Smyth was scathing about this. Describing it as "a Hobson's choice", he said it was "both irrational and unjust" that a pilot "through no act or default on his part could suffer the loss of €15,000". He added: "In my judgment this is a most onerous condition and bears all the hallmarks of oppression."
Pilots were understandably aggrieved by this condition. Ryanair management tried to discover what they were saying to each other on their website. Apparently supplied with a password by someone described by Mr Justice Smyth variously as a traitor, informer, Iscariot or Iago, the company infiltrated the website, and then took its court action to discover the identities of pilots who signed themselves "cantfly-wontfly" and "ihateryanair".
The judge found that there was no evidence of any bullying or intimidation of pilots by their colleagues on the website. He found wholly against Ryanair, and ordered the company to pay the costs of the seven-day action, estimated to be about €1 million.
He specifically found that the evidence of two senior members of Ryanair staff was "baseless and false". He judged that the real purpose of the company in investigating the pilots' website "was to break whatever resolve there might have been amongst the captains to seek better terms." He further stated that the decision to involve the Garda Síochána was unwarranted and had "all the hallmarks of action in terrorem" (ie designed to terrify).
Mr Justice Smyth took two hours to deliver his 65-page judgment last July. His further characterisations of the actions of Ryanair include the following: "despotic indifference", "sneering disregard", "facade of concern", "unburdened by integrity".
Justice Smyth concluded that "without hesitation, I find as a fact that ... 'fairness' did not seem to come into the reckoning of the plaintiff [ Ryanair] in its dealings with the defendants on the issues raised in and by this case. In summary, in the words of Isabella in Measure for Measure Act II.2: 'Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant'."
It is important to remember that these are not the views of disgruntled Ryanair employees, or of passengers fed up by all the hidden charges on top of the airline's flight costs. It is, rather, an insight into the culture of Ryanair from an impeccably authoritative source, a judge of the land dispassionately and impartially considering the facts as laid before him.
It begs an important question. Do we really wish to equate the kind of values defined by Mr Justice Smyth with the "new" Ireland? Are we happy that a company which engages in activities so roundly condemned by the judge should stand for us as an emblem of what we wish and hope our society to become?