Ryanair has planned to create up to 2,000 new jobs in Ireland over the next eight years.
Positions will include roles for pilots, cabin crew, engineers and IT developers.
The carrier plans to increase its annual passenger count by 10 million by 2030 while continuing to expand.
Ryanair currently employs 2,600 people in Ireland and 17,000 across its international network.
The news comes as the airline released a report outlining its contribution to the Irish economy over the past 35 years.
“From very humble beginnings in Waterford, Ryanair has grown into Europe’s largest airline and the world’s fifth largest airline by passenger volumes,” said Ryanair DAC CEO Eddie Wilson.
“However, we are now entering a new decade of growth and investment here in Ireland,” Mr Wilson said.
“In partnership with our main airport partners in Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast, Ryanair plans to grow Irish traffic from 20 million to 30 million a year over the next decade,” he added.
Today’s analysis, compiled by PwC, revealed that Ryanair currently operates 200 routes at seven airports across the country, carrying 20 million passengers a year.
The airline supports more than 26,000 jobs in Ireland every year, it also concluded, with the company itself and the passengers it carries spending more than €1.5 billion here a year.
He also found that since 1985, the airline has carried 230 million passengers to and from the country.
With the airline recovering faster than any other EU-based competitor, recording 15% growth here this year compared to the pre-pandemic period, the company outlined growth plans for the future.
This includes the arrival in Ireland of some of the 210 new Boeing 737 Gamechanger aircraft, a new maintenance hangar in Shannon and the opening of a new €8 million Engineering Center of Excellence.
The company’s technology arm, Ryanair Labs, is also set to grow from 600 to 1,000 employees over the next five years.
“We call on the Irish Government to pursue policies to promote low-cost connectivity and reduce the environmental impact of air travel by pushing for urgent reform of Europe’s chronically inefficient ATC system and opposing unfair environmental taxes that penalize the most efficient point-to-point flights, while exempting the most polluting long-haul and connecting flights across Europe,” Wilson said.
“As a peripheral country on the periphery of Europe, it is vital that Ryanair continues to promote low cost and environmentally efficient connectivity for Irish citizens/visitors to Europe and the world, and also that we continue to bring many millions of European visitors to Dublin and parts of Ireland throughout the year,” he added.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said Ireland could be proud of Ryanair as an Irish company and a “driving force for change”.
“As an island, we are highly dependent on our connectivity to Europe and the inbound tourism it brings,” he said.
“There is more good news today with Ryanair’s commitment to increase its Irish passenger numbers to 30 million a year, create over 2,000 new high-skilled jobs and invest more in its seven airports. in Ireland,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Ryanair Group CEO has called recent energy policy decisions in the UK “crazy”.
Michael O’Leary said that you can’t have a two-year energy guarantee without any cost.
“I think it could bankrupt the UK economy over the next couple of years,” Mr O’Leary said.
“We went there with the bank guarantee in 2007/2008. We can’t go back there anymore.”
The airline chief said we had to be careful that the budget here was not inflationary, but added that he thought the Irish government had presented it in a reasonable way.
He said he personally wouldn’t agree with some of the spending decisions.
“As a father of four, I don’t need extra child benefit, a supplement to my child benefit,” said Mr O’Leary, who is one of the world’s wealthiest businessmen. from Ireland.
Mr O’Leary hailed the decision to raise the upper limit of the point at which people have to pay the highest rate of tax as a “great first step”.
He said working people and working families must be allowed to keep more of their money.
The CEO added that he would like the government to increase it more in the next two budgets.
The Tánaiste said he was not unduly concerned about the economic situation in the UK, but we are paying attention to what is happening because the UK is our closest neighbor and one of the main trading partners of Ireland.
“Just as is the case with the United States or the Eurozone, if one of our main trading partners goes into recession, it has an impact on us and so we are looking closely at the situation in other countries. , but I’m not too worried at this stage,” said Leo Varadkar.
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