British low-cost airline, Go, has set up in Dublin offering cheap flights to Edinburgh and Glasgow from September.

It will compete with both Irish budget airline Ryanair and Aer Lingus on the Glasgow route and with Aer Lingus alone on the Edinburgh route. Ryanair does not fly to Edinburgh from Dublin.

Go is quoting return flights from £50 to Edinburgh and £45 to Glasgow airport, including all taxes, from September 19 onwards.

Ryanair's cheapest return flight in September to Glasgow, Prestwick, 40 minutes outside Glasgow, is £29.85 and Aer Lingus, which - like Go - flies into Glasgow's main airport, is quoting a return fare of £160.07 to Glasgow and £182.90 to Edinburgh.

Ryanair boss Mr Michael O'Leary was unimpressed by Go. "This is going to be a disaster because if the best they can manage is £45 as against our £29 nobody will be flying with them except for the passengers they take off Aer Lingus," Mr O'Leary said yesterday.

He claimed that at those prices Go did not even qualify as a low-budget airline. "Their fares are 60 per cent higher than Ryanair and they have a crap schedule. Their first flight out in the morning is 10 a.m. We will be out and back at that stage - goodbye Go," he said.

Go chief executive Ms Barbara Cassani, who was in Dublin yesterday to introduce the company's service, said she expected the airline to carry 500,000 passengers. "It's about time Irish travellers had the opportunity to combine low fares and high quality - Go's here to provide it," she said.

Go made a profit of £4 million sterling for the year to end March 2001 and has a fleet of 15 Boeing 737-300 aircraft.

Ryanair, which has a fleet of 36 aircraft, recorded profits of €104.5 million on revenues of €487.4 million for the year to March 2001.

Ms Cassani said Go plans to increase its fleet of aircraft, which it leases, to 25 next year and if it meets its targets will consider introducing a route from Dublin to London.

Mr O'Leary repeated his criticisms of the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, whom he described as "the worst minister for transport in the history of transport in this country. But don't take my word for it - look at Aer Rianta, Aer Lingus, CIE, ESB - you name it," he said.

He said Ryanair had offered the minister 50 flights a day to locations in Europe but had been turned down for the last two years. "Go are coming in with seven flights a day from Scotland and we offered her 50 a day from Ireland to the South of France, four destinations in Italy, Germany, Scandinavia. We would have brought in 2 million passengers a year," he said. "I would say Go will be lucky if they bring in 300,000."