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news
Michael O’Leary, licensed CC BY 2.0 by World Travel and Tourism Council.jpgRyanair CEO – “Take cyclists out and shoot them”
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has never been one to shy away from making controversial remarks – his latest being a suggestion that cyclists should be taken out and shot.
The businessman made his comments in a keynote speech at the Creative Minds conference at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin this morning, reports Independent.ie.
At the event, organised by the US Embassy, he took aim at the city council’s ambitions to get more people cycling.
"That's all we need in Dublin is more blooming bicycles," he said. "In a country where it rains about 250 days a year, the way forward for Dublin is more bicycles.
“Let's just go back to walking altogether. Soon we'll be living in caves designed by Dublin City Council. Traffic won't work, there's nowhere to park the cars and yet this is a smarter way forward.
“We should take the cyclists out and shoot them."
O’Leary lives in County Westmeath, around 55 miles from Ryanair’s headquarters at Dublin Airport.
"We should create a city that works given that this is a low rise, broadly based city and I speak as one of the commuters who commutes on a daily basis from Mullingar,” he said.
“I can't do it by bicycle ... I want to drive and I expect Dublin City [Council] to come up with a smarter way for me to get around Dublin and be able to park my car somewhere in the middle of Dublin without it being dug up every six weeks so we can have some other faddy non sustainable public transport solution.
"I hate to pick on Dublin City Council, but shit they're here and they deserve a slapping," he added.
In September at the inaugural Cycle Planning Awards, Dublin beat off competition from the London Borough of Southwark, Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester and Coventry to be named the local authority with the most cycle-friendly policies for the Greater Dublin Area Cycle Network Plan. The citation read:
The project was completed in 2013 and published in April 2014 and set the challenging task of developing a strategic cycle network for the Dublin City, Fingal, South Dublin, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and Wicklow areas, known as the Greater Dublin Area. This plan was aimed at increasing this further and taking cycling to Northern European levels of usage over the coming five to 10 years, ambitious but in the context of over 100 per cent growth over the last five to 10 years achievable.
> Dublin among winners at Cycle Planning Awards
The city ranked 15th in the 2015 Copenhagenize Index of the world's most bicycle-friendly cities, with the urban design company behind the ranking saying that "the city has been inspirational for the rest of the world in its efforts to increase cycling levels."
Last year, Ryanair was widely derided on social media when it trumpeted price reductions in extra charges for carrying sports equipment which for a bicycle actually increased the cost per flight from €50 to €60.
> Ryanair "reduces" bike fee from €50 to €60, flies into cloud of Twitter derision
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- mdavidford 1 hour 6 min ago
Straight to the heart of the periphery there...
- Rendel Harris 1 hour 6 min ago
March 21st, 1967: birth of Adrian Chiles.
- wtjs 1 hour 26 min ago
No, the last word in tubeless repair is a tube - although that could be a TPU one for up-to-date cyclists!
- chrisonabike 2 hours 33 min ago
(This is rather OT now, but...)...
- chrisonabike 3 hours 14 min ago
That's old hand! You really want a hand with integrated display.
- David9694 4 hours 42 min ago
It made a hole and police are looking into it.
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Frustrated Cambridgeshire bus drivers blame congested roads for delays to services...
- Rome73 7 hours 3 min ago
Yes, I agree. These huge vehicles scare cyclists and discourage cycling. I would not let my children cycle some of the routes I regularly cycle...
- David9694 21 hours 49 min ago
Person trapped after campervan flips in Devon crash...
- Hirsute 22 hours 39 min ago
My wife forgot to tell me about this and now the 48 hour deadline has passed. No ved either.
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100 comments
You always have new information. Re-examining your beliefs, you are older and more experienced than you were when your beliefs formed and perhaps better equipped to think rationally and objectively about what you have come to believe. This often happens with indoctrinated children whose beliefs alter with experience as they become better at critical thinking.
In any case, reflecting on what you believe is not the same thing as actively changing one's beliefs, even if such a thing were possible.
We know through science that the earth is flat. We don't know that God favours Islam or Judaism or Christianity, or indeed even if there is a god. Beliefs are based on superstition. Knowing the earth is round is based on science. One can change one's superstitions but one can't (without irrefutable evidence) refute science.
This comes from a man, that had his car registered as a Taxi/Hackney so he can use the bus lanes to skip traffic. Do us a favour Michael and ride one of your useless dogfood horses instead.
I'm thinking that at a Creative Minds conference, there'd be a good few cyclists in the audience...
He's taking the piss as usual. He knows how to hit the headlines.
Anyway, he gets a free pass for life for the shagging the Queen joke a while back. Pure class.
Cunt of the month.
Never flown Ryanair now never will....
Without all the cycle commuters Dublin would be even more congested and polluted.
Exactly. The headline should be "Hysterical Hate-filled Moton Looks Gift-horse in Mouth".
So true, I really think it will take cyclists to co ordinate a monthly travel by car day, for the drivers to realise cyclists are not making their journeys slower.
Now, is the the same Michael O'Leary who, back in the days when Dublin City Council had a cap on taxi licences and a licence was changing hands for up to €75,000, bought himself a licence so that he could pretend to be a taxi and gain access to the taxi-only and bus lanes to beat the traffic into the city centre?
If I made a public statement saying protestants/Muslims/Jews/gays etc should be rounded up and shot I'd probably be arrested for committing a "hate crime". How is this any different.
I for one will never be using a Ryan air flight.
Oh, I came to that conclusion a looong time ago.
Me too!
Cycling is voluntary. Beliefs, race, sexuality, gender, disabilities are not voluntary. Which is why they are protected characteristics in law. Demanding that people should be erased, not for what they do, but merely for having the audacity to exist, is an order of magnitude more repellent. Kind of like the NAZIs.
This guy is a professional knobjockey though. File under twat and move on.
Beliefs are voluntary. One can alter a belief at any time.
and my belief is that he is a publicity seeking wank puffin
Oh thats so unfair to puffins!
Bigotry and hatred of another group is no less worse because someone volutered to be part of such a group, like say by changing or converting to a religion.
Besides someone could be cycling to their job at Ryan Air because they are not being paid enough to afford a car or public transport, should a bus even go in right direction.
beliefs are voluntary. That's why it's ok to criticise them and to mock them.
we can all mock this guy as a knobjockey for his belief that cyclists (who are all cyclists by choice) should be shot, or for believing in virgin birth, that god created man from a clot of blood, reincarnation, or enlightenment values (if he does), but not for his race, sex or any disability he might have.
I actually do agree with you on almost all of that; except: beliefs are - IMO - voluntary. You choose a religion, or you choose to stay in a religion. Other than that, I agree with you (shudders)
OK. You can choose to be a muslim but why would you do that if the beliefs that you already have when you make that decision are incompatible? You might choose to join the club called "muslim" ifor all the social benefits that accrue from associating with people who believe similar things but you have not chosen your beliefs.
Who seriously thinks, I have decided to become a Buddhist, I had better find out what they believe so I can choose to believe the same things ... that is the cart before the horse.
Religious belief is voluntary.
A good answer! However, upon further thought, a gray zone appears especially with regards to "belief". A person can self-idenify as a "cyclist", in much the same way as a person can identify with a religion. Moreover, there are strong social correlations between "cyclists". Children of cyclists are more likely to self-identify as "cyclists". Not surprisingly, most "cyclists" practice cycling, many of them religiously.
Thanks.
One of my favourite passages on the subject of belief, written about this controversial scripture (many theologians maintain it is not authentic)...
"Whoso believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and whoso believeth not shall be damned."
There is not one particle of sense in it. Why? No man can control his belief. You hear evidence for and against, and the integrity of the soul stands at the scales and tells which side rises and which side falls. You can not believe as you wish. You must believe as you must. And he might as well have said: "Go into the world and preach the gospel, and whosoever has red hair shall be saved, and whosoever hath not shall be damned."
Robert Green Ingersoll
Beliefs not voluntary? Really?
I 100% agree with you. I was going to write the same thing until,I saw that you had already. Until such time as it's considered both socially and legally unacceptable to make public statements about killing cyclists, the acceptance of an anti-cyclist attitude will continue which in turn leads to deaths and destroyed lives. His defence will be that he doesn't really condone killing cyclists, but the reason it's illegal to use hate speech calling for the killing of others groups of citizens is because it feeds into a culture of acceptance of such attitudes which in turn leads to 0.1% of people taking actions which do lead to deaths.
Most disturbing is that, just as a racist might call for the deaths of blacks or migrants in order to bolster is popularity amongst his audience, he makes this statement in order to impress his audience. If such statements were investigated as hate speech against a societal group, then perhaps his audience would feel uncomfortable and ashamed to hear him say it and to be associated with him.
Until then, it's just a "joke", as is calling for the death of migrants, blacks, Jews etc. After all, he didn't _really_ mean it.
Never flying Ryan Air again.
The simple answer is because the groups you mention are protected by anti-discrimination law, and cyclists are not.
I wouldn't piss on O'Leary if he was on fire, and I wouldn't breed from him if he were the last man on earth. Giving him the opportunity to speak on anything other than greed is a waste of time and oxygen. The only thing the man understands is selfishness.
Were you to express a similar sentiment about one of his fleet of polluting vehicles, you would be locked up as a terrorist.
Name calling doesn't solve anything.
But to say something like that, you've got to be a bit of a pillock.
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