The Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has accused the Government of incompetence and of misrepresenting the positon to his airline.
This afternoon Michael O'Leary released correspondence between his airline and the Government, dating back 12 months and dealing with the Hangar 6 issue and the possible location of 300 Ryanair jobs there.
But, speaking in Dundalk this afternoon, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan said the Government had been as fair and as reasonable as possible.
Speaking to the Oireachtas Transport Committee, Mr O'Leary said that despite making lots of promises to co-operate and support the project, the Government did not lift one finger to help airline.
Mr O'Leary said it was not too late to create 300 jobs at Dublin Airport. He said the way to prove that was for someone to call his bluff, by providing him with Hangar 6. Then he would create the jobs.
He said Aer Lingus has no demand for Hangar 6 to carry out line maintenance. Earlier, Aer Lingus said Hangar 6 would house a new centralised staff operations centre.
Mr O'Leary claimed he offered to buy or lease Hangar 6 nine months before it was leased to Aer Lingus on Christmas Eve last.
Mr O'Leary has accused the Taoiseach and Tánaiste of 'telling lies' about the need for Aer Lingus to use Hangar 6 and the efforts they have made to attract Ryanair jobs to Dublin. He said he was being treated differently to any other international business wanting to create jobs here.
Mr O'Leary said he was currently considering two offers from other Governments to locate the jobs elsewhere. That would happen, he said, within weeks.
But the Tánasite said it was not within the Government's remit to take Hangar 6 off Aer Lingus and - if the situation were reversed - she did not think Ryanair would be happy if the State interfered with it. She reiterated that alternatives had been made available to Ryanair to provide the airline with a large hangar for the maintanence of aircraft.
Aer Lingus has plans for Hangar 6
Aer Lingus earlier said its new staff operations centre would accommodate maintenance, technical, operations control, and flight and cabin operations. Hangar 6 is already home to the airline's maintenance division and has space for more than 400 staff in modern offices.
Aer Lingus also said it was considering introducing around 1,100 compulsory redundancies and scaling back its operations as a contingency plan if staff fail to approve a €97m cost reduction programme. Staff are currently balloting on the plan.
Last October, Aer Lingus said it wanted to reduce staff costs by €74m and introduce around 700 redundancies, pay cuts and pension changes. Since then, unions and management have been in negotiations on other ways of securing cost reductions.
