by Alan Ruddock
Contrition was a temporary affliction. By the end of April O’Leary was at war with Ireland’s department of transport because he refused to cooperate with procedures the government had put in place to reduce the risk of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A highly contagious and potentially deadly virus, SARS had first emerged in China in November 2002 and was being billed as a major threat to aviation as governments took measures to prevent its spread. Although fatalities were few, it had provoked a global media storm that threatened to scupper the aviation industry’s slow recovery from the 11 September attacks – a recovery already imperilled by the invasion of Iraq by United States and British forces. O’Leary insisted Ryanair could weather the storm, but the market disagreed and Ryanair’s shares fell along with other airline stocks, encouraged downwards by British Airways claims that SARS had contributed to its low passenger numbers the previous month.
The Irish government had responded to the epidemic by requiring airlines to broadcast a 48-second SARS alert to passengers and to distribute leaflets. Hardly onerous, but O’Leary was unimpressed and determined to prevent what he saw as a low-risk disease spreading panic among European air travellers. On 29 April he wrote to John Brown at the Airports Division of the department of transport.
Your letter dated 25 April (which we received by fax at 17.00 hrs on Friday) to all airlines and their handling agents was both unnecessary and ridiculously disproportionate.
At a time when Irish tourism is trying to fend off the adverse effects of the war in Iraq and the international economic downturn we are now to be hindered by a bunch of incompetent civil servants designing irresponsible and unnecessary leaflets/passenger announcements solely to appear to the local media like you are actually doing something, instead of sensibly analysing and addressing the actual threat to Ireland or Irish people from SARS in a proportionate and realistic fashion.
The (non-existent) threat to Ireland from SARS is a media invention which is in danger of running riot because of the absence of any common-sense response from panicked civil servants and spineless politicians…More people in Europe got killed falling off barstools this weekend than got killed from SARS. What’s next, leaflets on Irish aircraft to warn visitors about the threat of Legionnaires’ Disease in Irish hospitals? Why don’t you get a grip of yourselves?
O’Leary made it clear that his airline would not be cooperating with the department’s demands. When Micheal Martin, the health minister, intervened on the side of the transport department and appealed for cooperation, O’Leary’s response was withering.
We would appreciate it if, the next time the Department of Transport wants to panic and pander to some manufactured media controversy in order to threaten even further international confidence in the Irish tourism industry, you might consider actually consulting with one or two of the larger airline/ferry operators and then put in place proportionate and realistic measures that bear some relationship to the magnitude of the threat to the health and safety of our passengers, our staff and the population of this country. I have never read such a ridiculous, spineless, load of nonsense.
Unloved by the media and feared by the establishment, O’Leary was nonetheless a celebrity. His public persona was now well established, but little was known about his private life. In April an Irish journalist decided to exploit the fact that O’Leary’s house outside Mullingar was designated a ‘heritage home’, which meant it was open to the public on a certain number of days each year – a concession which allowed the owner tax breaks on the costs of maintaining the house. When O’Leary had bought Gigginstown in 1993, he had been ‘to the pin of his collar’ to pay for it. The house needed to be renovated and modernized, so O’Leary had signed up to the heritage scheme. ‘I had spent a couple of hundred thousand that I really didn’t have doing it up,’ he says. ‘And so the tax relief was very important to me at the time.’
Gigginstown remained open to the public in 2003 because the tax relief scheme required houses to remain open for five years after the final claim. ‘People think that I pulled out of the scheme because I’m a celebrity,’ O’Leary says. ‘I didn’t. I pulled out of the scheme five years earlier because at that stage I thought, I want to get married and have a family down here. It’s not so much that I don’t want them coming into my family home, frankly I don’t much care. But it’s not fair to your [future] wife and kids to have people traipsing up and down the place for three months in the summer.’
While O’Leary went through the process of withdrawing from the scheme, Liam Collins of the Sunday Independent decided to take a look, bringing his wife and children for the tour. Instead of bringing a photographer from the newspaper, Collins asked his wife to take pictures. ‘They went berserk at the office, and they dispatched a photographer down to take fresh pictures,’ says Collins, whose visit had gone unnoticed by O’Leary.
[The photographer] arrives at the gate of Gigginstown and demands to be let in. They say, ‘You’re from where?’ He says, ‘The Sunday Independent; there was a reporter down here and he’s done a piece.’ ‘Oh really…’
So the next thing O’Leary gets on to the Irish Independent [the Sunday Independent’s sister paper], the eejit. He rings them up to complain. Vinny Doyle, the editor, listens to O’Leary, puts the phone down and says, ‘That’s a great idea, get our reporter down there.’ So one of the girls was sent down and they wouldn’t let her in.
When O’Leary finally got through to Collins’s editor, he made much of the invasion into his privacy and the potential for the article to tip off burglars. ‘Then he started sending solicitor’s letters, he sent about three, saying not to publish it, that we were putting him in danger,’ says Collins. ‘As if. I mean, if you were any way intelligent you’d know where he lives.’
Despite O’Leary’s entreaties, the article was published on 13 April. ‘There is nothing to indicate that this is the entrance to Gigginstown House, home of Michael O’Leary – Ireland’s wealthiest bachelor,’ Collins began.
But you can guess by the pristine state of the stone walls and the extended gate lodge that it isn’t the seat of some decrepit old Anglo-Irish squire. Gigginstown is not a big house. In fact, it’s rather small, but perfectly proportioned. But [O’Leary] is currently extending it to at least twice the size. There is a long columned swimming pool facing on to the walled garden and, on the other side, suites of bedrooms and offices. A tall crane hangs incongruously over the house as workmen toil in the sunshine…
Collins then provided his readers with a detailed description of the interior of the house. ‘You ascend the steps and pass through a stone porch and into the hallway, where dozens of portraits soar up the stairway towards a glass dome,’ Collins wrote.
Michael O’Leary fills his walls with old portraits in much the same way as he packs his Ryanair flights with cut-price travellers. In big ornate gilt frames, blue bloods from the 17th and 18th century soar towards the beautifully corniced ceilings…As befits a stud farm owner of note, virtually the only other paintings on his walls are of horses. Derby winners, famous sires and old nags, whose names are now long forgotten, jostle for space on his elegantly papered walls. The room on the left-hand side of the hallway is the dining room and it goes on into a second reception room. Neither is very large, but the ceilings are high and there are lovely Waterford chandeliers and glassware by Louise Kennedy. An Ascot Gold Cup from the 1840s is one of the trophies on a side table.
The atmosphere is slightly spoiled by a large television and video, with horse videos and a cassette of Ben Hur. Among the CDs is Burt Bacharach. And beside it the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game…Across the hall is another reception room filled with more paintings. The rooms are rather impersonal. It’s like walking through a miniature version of the National Gallery in Dublin.
Behind this is Michael O’Leary’s study, complete with desk and computer. One side is lined with old bound volumes, including the Annals of the Four Masters, while in the far corner his modern booksh
elves are crowded with business tomes and biographies of, among others, Churchill. In the four downstairs rooms there are only two personal photographs – one of him as a member of a golfing team and the other with a female friend on a skiing holiday. There are a few tacky Ryanair mementoes, but they are hardly noticeable…
O’Leary was not happy. Despite his willingness to prostitute himself for the Ryanair brand, he drew a clear distinction between his public and private lives. He believed he could court the media for business purposes, but turn them away when he decided that he wanted to retreat.
After a relatively brief courtship – they had met a year earlier at the wedding of Shane Ryan, Tony Ryan’s youngest son – O’Leary announced that he was engaged to Anita Farrell, a banker who had some experience of the aviation market.
O’Leary understood that the media interest would be intense. ‘You cannot on the one hand court publicity as I do for Ryanair and then on the other hand say, “Oh, I want to be alone,”’ he says. The attention was ‘a pain in the arse’, but also ‘a small price to pay’.
It was an opportunity for the media to peek behind O’Leary’s image of a committed, if demonic, businessman and glimpse the man. The tabloids announced that O’Leary was ‘head over heels in love’ and that he had showered his fiancee with presents – including a racehorse. The Daily Mirror proclaimed that the wedding was ‘not to be a no frills affair’ and the Sunday Independent said it would be ‘the grandest event’. The papers were desperate for photographs of Farrell, with the Mirror appealing to its readers for help. Background details on the future Mrs O’Leary were thin on the ground. Anita Farrell was an understated woman – attractive, intelligent and single. She also knew the airline business, working in the aviation leasing division of Citigroup, the giant American financial institution, from its offices in Dublin’s Financial Services Centre, and she liked horses, another O’Leary passion. In the past she had worked with Andrew Lobbenberg, the London stockbroker whose critical analysis of Ryanair had caused a share-price wobble.
O’Leary was smitten. ‘Underneath that arrogant, aggressive exterior you have to remember that like most Irish men he’s a mammy’s boy at heart,’ says one school friend who has stayed in touch with O’Leary through the years. ‘Mick wanted to be loved and he wanted to be looked after, he wasn’t looking for a trophy wife like a twenty-three-year-old supermodel. That’s all bullshit. He wanted a woman who could settle down, lead a quiet life and bring up his kids, not someone who wanted a society life. He nearly managed it with Denise [Dowling] and he was really lucky with Anita.’
The marriage would take place less than six months after the engagement. ‘I think he desperately wanted to get married and get the heir to the empire under way,’ says Paul Fitzsimmons. ‘I think that was a driver for him.’
It was, O’Leary claims, the most nerve-racking day of his life. A man who had negotiated billion-dollar deals with Boeing, who had fought trade unions, governments and airline rivals, had been brought to his knees by a woman. On 5 September 2003, in a small church in the village of Delvin, County Westmeath, Michael O’Leary was about to get married.
For the Irish media O’Leary’s wedding was a rare opportunity to record the wealthy at play in their own backyard. It would not be the celebrity wedding of the year – that distinction would belong to Georgina Ahern, daughter of the taoiseach, and Nicky Byrne, a singer with Westlife, an Irish boy-band – but it would be close. Ahern and Byrne’s wedding was in France, not Ireland, and the rights had been sold to a celebrity magazine. The O’Leary wedding was home-grown and free. ‘I never thought about selling it to Hello!’ he says. ‘That’s for the ones who can’t afford to pay for their own weddings.’
And so a mob of television crews and reporters crowded outside St Livinius’s, held back from the steps of the church by security guards and crash barriers, while a small army of smartly dressed women in black suits vetted guests and fitted them with wristbands as if they were going backstage at a rock concert. O’Leary arrived at the church ten minutes early, fresh from a game of golf at his local club, accompanied by his brother and best man, Eddie. Sporting a pink waistcoat beneath his black morning coat, he looked at the media scrum behind the barriers mingling with local well-wishers, shouted a greeting and then could not resist using his wedding day as yet another marketing opportunity.
‘Will your bride be late?’ he was asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘She’s flying Aer Lingus.’ She arrived a respectable thirty-seven minutes late, and RTE, which had sent a camera crew and reporter to cover the wedding, dutifully carried O’Leary’s jibe on its main evening news bulletin.
One hour later Mr and Mrs O’Leary emerged from the church and faced the throng outside. Until that moment on the steps of the church O’Leary and Farrell had never been pictured together by a press photographer, as had been the case with Denise Dowling. Since the wedding they have continued to guard their privacy jealously and photographs of the couple remain a rarity. When asked to give his bride a kiss, O’Leary refused, saying, ‘That’s for the wedding album only.’ The line between public and private had been drawn again.
The formalities over, the couple made the ten-minute journey to Gigginstown in a vintage Bentley. The best-known of the 300 guests were Mary Harney, Ireland’s then deputy prime minister and leader of the Progressive Democrats; Charlie McCreevy, then minister for finance and now Ireland’s European commissioner; and J.P. McManus, the billionaire financier and racehorse owner. O’Leary insists he wasn’t aiming for A-list guests. ‘I didn’t want a bunch of politicians at my wedding for the sake of having politicians at my wedding,’ he says. ‘I know Charlie and Noleen [McCreevy]; I know Mary and Brian [Harney], so they got invited. And I know J.P. [McManus] for donkey’s years – if you were involved in racing then you know J.P. There were no celebs there.’
Gigginstown had been transformed for the reception, with marquees to accommodate the guests and a small army of staff to serve them. ‘Between the house and the garden there was an awning – it was carpeted – and every ten or fifteen feet there were flowers draped along,’ recalls one of the contract staff hired for the day.
After the tunnel there was the walled garden, and there’s a pond in the centre, and the waiters were standing there with the champagne when the guests arrived. Then they were called into the first marquee which was forty foot wide and eighty foot long, that’s where the bar was. From there they went into the courtyard, they had to go up big granite steps, over a bridge of the swimming pool, specially made. The courtyard is enclosed, they put on a marquee roof. There’s a fountain in the centre, three big gods round it. And the pool has all Italian statues round it – the gods of this, that and the other – you’d think you were in Rome. Then they went into the second huge marquee and that’s where they had their meal.
O’Leary had also laid on a champagne tent and a chill-out tent for those who needed respite from the festivities.
Twelve hours after they arrived, the last of the guests headed wearily home. It had been a success, with O’Leary talking passionately about his wife, ignoring his business and surprising some with his lightness of foot on the dance floor.
The morning newspapers gave the wedding celebrity status, and the O’Learys headed off for their honeymoon – a trip to the Maldives and unaccustomed calm for O’Leary.
22. Baying for Blood
Back from his honeymoon O’Leary was immediately embroiled in crisis. Competition in the European low-fare industry was growing ever more intense as scores of new airlines tried to mimic Ryanair’s success, while the traditional carriers and Europe’s charter operators tried to fight back. More seats for sale and lower ticket prices could lower profits, as O’Leary was forced to slash seat prices to fill his steadily expanding fleet of planes.
Simultaneously, he had to engage with the European Commission’s deliberations on Ryanair’s covert agreement with Char-leroi airport – an issue that had assumed far greater signi
ficance now that its timing coincided with a period of bloated capacity and falling fares.
O’Leary would be able to ride out one storm, but could he handle two if the financial markets were baying for blood? If Ryanair ran into difficulty, no matter how short term, would the enemies that O’Leary had made over the years emerge to bury him? ‘He has got a lot of free publicity for Ryanair, but he’s pursued a very risky strategy from a personal point of view. He’s made so many enemies and offended so many people that if for any reason the financial performance of the company isn’t what is expected, I think there will be quite a few people who will begin to believe he’s a loose cannon – and not worth the risk as chief executive of a public company,’ said Stelios Haji Ioannou.
The potential damage from an adverse commission ruling on Charleroi was hard to gauge. If the ruling went against Ryanair, in itself this would be costly but hardly catastrophic – at worst the airline would be forced to repay about €10 million to the Walloon government. The unknown factor was the effect it could have on other deals that Ryanair had negotiated with state-owned airports across Europe. About a quarter of the airports served by Ryanair were under state ownership, and O’Leary had negotiated low charges and marketing support with each one, deals no different to those agreed with privately owned airports. Underlying each was the same basic business philosophy: Ryanair would bring large amounts of passengers, and the airports could make money from those passengers.
The pressure on Ryanair started to build when news of the European Commission’s deliberations began to leak to the media. In early September unnamed commission officials briefed the financial press and set the tone for a fight that would spill over into viciousness. ‘We are in favour of low-cost airlines but we must be sure that nobody is breaking the rules,’ one official was quoted as saying. ‘We have to decide whether the tax breaks and other public money which Ryanair receives are acceptable or whether it constitutes illegal state aid.’