Michael O’Leary arrived at Ireland West Airport in a Mayo jersey, praising its founder Monsignor James Horan and saying the airport can keep expanding with further Government support
Speaking at the launch of Ryanair’s largest-ever summer schedule from Knock, the 65-year-old said that “Ryanair and Knock have disproven all the naysayers over the last 40 years”.
Mr O’Leary’s visit coincides with the 40-year anniversary of Ireland West Airport Knock’s official opening and the first Ryanair flight leaving the airport in 1986.
This summer, Ryanair will be operating 17 routes to and from Knock – including eight routes to and from the UK and nine routes to and from Europe – and expects to carry over 1 million passengers to and from the airport this summer, accounting for some 95pc of the airport’s total traffic.
Knock Airport, which welcomed a record 946,381 passengers in 2025, is expected to exceed 1 million passengers later this year.
Mr O’Leary said that the airport could potentially exceed 1.5 million passengers in the future.
He added that Ryanair hoped to expand its operations at the airport with support from the Regional Airport Support Scheme, which provides funding for infrastructure at airports with fewer than 1 million passengers a year.
Ireland West Airport Knock received €1.9 million under the latest allocation and has been included in the 2026-2030 Regional Airports Programme.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary paid a brief visit to Ireland West Airport Knock on Tuesday to mark the airport’s 40th anniversary. Photo: Michael McLaughlin
“That one million [passenger cap] should be lifted to two million, but without any tapering off. That would enable Knock to continue to invest here, to receive support for infrastructure investments,” Mr O’Leary told reporters.
“And we certainly, working together with Joe [Gilmore, Ireland West Airport Knock Managing Director] and his team, would be more than happy to put more flights into Knock Airport and continue to grow.
“We think we should be trying to grow from a million to maybe a million and a half passengers, but there’s a big cost penalty for Knock Airport once they go over a million passengers, and the government needs to re-look at that so that we can continue to invest and grow here.”
Mr O’Leary said a rail link to the airport via Charlestown via a reopened Western Rail Corridor would be “a complete waste of time”.
The southern half of the Western Rail Corridor between Claremorris and Athenry is due to reopen. However, the northern section between Claremorris and Sligo remains disused, despite calls to reopen this section.
“Look, we have a country with a population of five and a half million people. We don’t have the population base to support these mad railway systems,” said O’Leary.
“We have very good road infrastructure. We have terrific public transport, bus services from Dublin Airport to all over the country. There’s bus services that leave Knock Airport here and take people to Dublin Airport as well. That works well.”
Mr O’Leary doubled down on his criticism of the Dublin Metro project and lambasted the government for spending “billions on building f**ing railways that ultimately that will lose money from the day they open”.
“We do need to fix the infrastructure around Dublin. We should have an outer ring road outside the M50, because that’s where all the housing is getting built at the moment. If you want to build a tunnel, you should build a tunnel under Dublin Bay that would make the M50 circular or orbital and circular. But stop wasting money on stupid train systems that are massively over-specced and will not be used,” he said.
Mr O’Leary arrived at the airport at 11.30am this morning and donned a Mayo jersey after disembarking from an empty Boeing 737 jet.
He spoke to and posed for photographs with Ryanair staff, airport employees, and passengers, including Mayo footballer Aidan O’Shea, who was flying to Faro with his wife, Kristin McKenzie Vass, and their daughter, Romee.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary pictured with Mayo footballer Aidan O’Shea at Ireland West Airport Knock on Tuesday to mark the airport’s 40th anniversary. Photo: Michael McLaughlin
Mr O’Leary described the partnership between Knock Airport and Ryanair as “one of the great success stories of Irish tourism”.
“Nobody believed that you could build an airport on a bog on top of a hill in the west of Ireland. And even if it was going to be built, then nobody would come and use it.”
He described the airport as a “pleasant, stress-free environment” but said there was “room for further growth in Knock, particularly for inbound passengers from Europe”.
“Many of the Europeans don’t want to go to Dublin, they don’t want to go to the east coast, they actually want to go to the west coast…and Kerry [Airport] and Knock [Airport] give them that direct access at low fares into the west of Ireland.”
He also paid tribute to Monsignor James Horan, who died the year the airport officially opened in 1986, following several years of campaigning and fundraising for the airport.
“He was undoubtedly a visionary. Now he’s mad, but it was still a visionary project, and it has demonstrated its success over many years. I think he’s up there with Tony Ryan as being one of the real aviation visionaries that Ireland produced,” said Mr O’Leary.
“The people of Knock, Charlestown, the west of Ireland, should be eternally grateful for the work that Monsignor Horan did. I mean, he built an airport at the time for, really, chump change…about ten million quid at a time when our current government will waste two, two-and-a-half billion building a children’s hospital. They should bring back Monsignor Horan. He can get things done where Micheál Martin doesn’t.”
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary paid a brief visit to Ireland West Airport Knock on Tuesday to mark the airport’s 40th anniversary. Photo: Michael McLaughlin
Mr O’Leary said he did not watch RTÉ’s recent two-part documentary on the history of Ryanair, which he declined an invitation to take part in.
“I have much better things to be doing than watching that old rubbish,” he said.
Mr O’Leary presented a piece of crystal and a model Ryanair plane to Arthur French, Chairman of Ireland West Airport Knock, to mark Ryanair’s partnership with the airport, which began when the first Ryanair flight left Knock Airport in December 1986.
He later received a framed mirror featuring a collage of photographs from Joe Gilmore, Managing Director of Ireland West Airport Knock.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary pictured with Geraldine Walsh, Newport, pictured with Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary during his visit to Ireland West Airport Knock. Photo: Michael McLaughlin