Domhnall sent a message to Michael O’Leary – CEO, Ryanair – Email Address that said:
Dear Mr. O'Leary,
My name is Domhnall and I am a final year medical student, attending Trinity. I am unsure if this email will actually reach you, but in the event that it does, I thought I would contact you firstly to express my disappointment and secondly to say thank you.
I was interested to note your recent comments on the state broadcaster, RTE, and regular comments on matters of public interest such as transport, health and the Gardaí. These comments generally come from a specific frame of reference. Despite your reputation as a straight shooter, I believe that you have a different frame of reference, and indeed that you inhabit a different planet to the ordinary people to and for whom you profess to speak. The solely financial lens through which you, a leader and a prominent voice in society, see the world derives from and actively encourages a profound lack of societal compassion and basic ethics which I find genuinely depressing.
As I understand, you would sack the Gardaí, bus drivers, Luas drivers, nurses and presumably the doctors too if we decided to look for better working conditions. As I understand, you would generally favour privatising these and other major sectors in search of greater monetary (and, I suppose, moral) efficiency. I assume you would choose to replace me, and the servant of the public I hope to be as of July, with a contracted, transactionally motivated employee. Being only slightly facetious, I further assume you would choose to replace the concept of a common, social floor below which one might not fall with a durable, unyielding plastic floor of the kind with which you furnish your airplanes.
All around us, we are seeing a dismaying rise of scared, self-protecting populism in response to political, ecological and ethical challenges which says: we are and should be atomised, and each to his own. In Ireland, we are proud to have escaped such a moral turn inwards. When I read, however, your comments to an audience of eagerly receptive members of our country's governing party, derived as those comments are from a total, utter lack of societal compassion and communality, I suspected that with just a few Make Ireland Great Again hats, we could easily be no better off and no less divided than the societies we now observe with concern.
If you are unfamiliar with his work, I recommend you Robert 's poem 'Mending Wall', a favourite of mine. Mr. O'Leary, I believe that good fences do not make good neighbours. I believe that you build fences with every public comment you make.
It was with surprise, then, that I noted your introduction by the Minister for Finance as "Ireland's leading altogether decent man", which assumed were the introductory notes prepared for Fr. Peter McVerry or perhaps Mary Robinson, whose invitations were possibly rescinded when it was agreed that they do not know how to run a good business, and thus are insufficiently efficient to give a speech to the most influential decisionmakers in the country. But it appears his comments were in fact intended for you. I found this fact, and the societal and moral failure which it and you exemplify, genuinely saddening.
Finally, I would like to thank you, for making me notice some things I had forgotten. For example, I notice that you are a billionaire, which means you have a different frame of reference to people who are not billionaires. For example, Irish Traveler men have a life expectancy 15 years shorter than that of the rest of the country (and generally are not billionaires). For example, Ireland has one of the worst cancer survival statistics in Europe (primarily because of delays in diagnosis from the disparities of our class-based, stratified healthcare system, Sweden having the best cancer survival outcomes in Europe). For example, approximately 2200 Irish children are homeless. For reinvigorating my desire to remedy all of these societal shames, I wish to thank you.
I wish you good luck and efficiency.
Regards,
Domhnall
