According to Ryanair deputy CEO Michael Cawley, “there’s nowhere as beautiful in Dublin as Cork”. And to answer your inevitable follow-up question, yes, Michael is a Corkman.
It wouldn’t be stretching it to say that Ryanair have pulled a few stunts in their time, but Dubliners will hardly be happy about the fact that the airline recently published ads in French newspapers in an effort to encourage them to visit Dublin by using a picture that was not taken in Dublin, but in the People’s Republic instead. And they did it intentionally too.
According to the Irish Examiner, and as Cork natives will recognise in the picture below, the image in the ad is taken from the rooftop bar of Electric on Cork’s South Mall, with Parliament Bridge and Holy Trinity Church visible in the background.
People from Dublin and indeed most Irish people would argue that there are a number of suitable images of the capital that Ryanair could have used, but that wasn’t good enough for Ryanair deputy CEO Michael Cawley, who is quoted in the Examiner as saying: “We know it’s a picture of Cork, but there’s nowhere as beautiful in Dublin as Cork, so we used it to try and get more French passengers to fly to Dublin.”
While that sentiment may well go down well in a county that has traditionally been distinctly aware of its own importance, it will give residents of the capital another grievance against an airline that wouldn’t exactly be universally popular amongst air travellers at home and abroad.