Love him or hate him, Michael O'Leary has never been one to hold back on his views on, well, anything.

In a closed-off, invite-only fundraiser for Fine Gael at the Shelbourne Hotel, the Ryanair boss branded the national broadcaster as "a rat-infested North Korean union shop." O'Leary took it a step further, saying that RTE was peddling the views of "hard-left union Trotskyites".

The event, which was attended by senior Government ministers including Michael Noonan, Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar, was organised by the South Dublin branch of Fine Gael. Finance Minister Michael Noonan introduced O'Leary as "Ireland's altogether leading decent man."

It wasn't just RTE who got the broad side of O'Leary's attacks, either. The businessman also said that the proposed Garda strikes were "immoral" and that they should be handled like the 1981 US Air Traffic Controller Strike, in which US President Ronald Reagan sacked close to 11,000 controllers in an attempt to break the strike.

O'Leary's comments across the 40-minute speech were allegedly met with cheers and claps from those present, according to a report in the Irish Times.

 

Via Irish Times