Dr Tony Ryan: life and timesRyanair's founder made a lasting contribution to the Shannon area, writes Ciarán Hancock
Dr Tony Ryan's rise from humble origins in Tipperary to become Ireland's seventh-wealthiest man with an estimated family fortune of €1.5 billion is the stuff of legend.
Born in 1936 in Thurles, he was the son of a CIÉ worker. Tony Ryan left school at 16 and went to work in the local sugar factory, grading the sweetness of the beet.
He never made it to university, although this was not to hold him back in later life. "Life was his university," said Jim King, a friend and colleague of 15 years in GPA, the aviation and leasing business that Ryan helped to found.
"He was a very well-read man and a person of enormous creativity and boundless energy."
Ryan's love affair with aviation began in 1954 when he joined Aer Lingus. He started out in Shannon airport before moving to the United States with the then State-owned company, working in New York and Chicago.
He returned to Ireland in 1972. At about this time Aer Lingus acquired three Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Its transatlantic business was seasonal and it needed to offload some of its capacity in the winter months to help fund the purchase of the new aircraft.
"That was Tony Ryan's opportunity," said Tadgh Kearney, then chairman of the Air Transport Users' Council in a 2005 citation to honour Ryan's achievements in aviation. "He saw the potential, seized it with both hands, and the result was the founding of GPA."
Ryan set up GPA in 1975, risking €6,500 of his own money in the process, bringing Aer Lingus and Guinness Peat Group in as substantial investors. It based itself in Shannon to avail of its then tax-free status.
He built GPA into the world's largest operating lessor in the early 1990s with a fleet of more than 400 aircraft. At its peak, GPA had a valuation of $4 billion. The company was slated for a stock market flotation in 1992 but this was pulled.
It would have been the biggest flotation in Irish corporate history.
A downturn in the aviation industry, however, meant financial institutions shunned the initial public offering. GPA found itself with a large debt and unable to fund its aggressive expansion plans.
GPA was eventually restructured, with General Electric taking control of the business. Ryan left in 1996, battered and bruised by the experience.
GPA's legacy and Ryan's contribution to Shannon and its hinterland, however, continues to be felt today.
It is estimated that about 40 aviation-related companies now operate from Ireland. A cluster of industries also formed around the airport directly as a result of Ryan's commitment to the area.
In the 1980s, Ryan was responsible for setting up aircraft maintenance company Shannon Aerospace in a joint venture with Swiss Air and Lufthansa. It employs more than 800 staff.
PJ Mara, a former government press secretary and one-time adviser to the board of Ryanair, believes that the current controversy over Aer Lingus's decision to quit its Shannon to Heathrow routes wouldn't have happened on Ryan's watch.
"He just simply wouldn't have let it happen," Mara said. "He had a huge commitment to the region. He would have found a way around it."
Most people will remember Tony Ryan as the founder of Ryanair.
In 1985, he had the vision to establish a rival to Aer Lingus and after years of hard slog his dream became a reality, thanks in no small part to his decision to put his personal assistant, Michael O'Leary, in charge of the business.
Ryanair began flying from Waterford to Gatwick. It was a service that would never make big money. It would later expand its services to Luton and continental Europe.
Ryan had initially tried to launch an airline called Irlandia in 1980 but it never succeeded.Aviation was highly regulated back then and Ryanair found it tough to get a break in the face of competition from State-owned Aer Lingus.
After racking up millions of pounds of losses, Ryan went to then transport minister Séamus Brennan in 1989 and asked him to give Ryanair exclusive rights to certain routes to the UK and Europe in a bid to foster competition. It was a bold move.
Remarkably, the government agreed, and Ryanair was given exclusive rights to fly from Dublin to Stansted and Luton in London and from the capital to Liverpool and Munich. It now had opportunity to make money, unfettered by competition from Aer Lingus.
A new low-cost model was introduced and, with O'Leary at the helm, Ryanair has become Europe's biggest budget airline.
Ironically, it is also now Aer Lingus's biggest shareholder with a 29.44 per cent stake. At one point in the 1980s the national flag carrier was offered Ryanair for buttons but turned down the offer.
Ryanair last year carried 42.5 million passengers and made a net profit of €435.6 million. It employs 4,800 staff and is listed in Dublin and London.
Often derided, Ryanair is unquestionably one of Ireland's biggest corporate success stories.
In recent years, Ryan and his family have sought to repeat the trick by investing in Tiger Airways in Singapore and AeroBus in Mexico through Irlandia Investments.
Ryan is credited with having an eye for talent. Regarded as a tough task master, he was willing to take a punt on young, hungry executives who were willing to work hard and learn the ropes.
His proteges included O'Leary and telecoms entrepreneur Denis O'Brien, two of the most successful Irish businessmen of recent years.
Dómhnal Slattery, managing partner of Claret Capital, is another young buck entrepreneur who cut his teeth with GPA.
"Tony Ryan set out to master events and succeeded," said Kearney, in signing off his citation to Ryan in 2005.
"Because of him, Ireland has a significant place at the forefront of international aviation."