“I will not leave my children much money – but a nice house and 250 acres”

Mr. O’Leary’s farm in Gigginstown covers nearly 2,000 acres with approximately 250 purebred cows and 100 commercial cows.

“I like earth. I hope that in time all my children will become young farmers, get their green certs and we can pass them on to a fair amount of land whether they want to farm it or not at that point. It will be up to them.”

Both his grandparents and his farm parents and part of his young family are interested.

As for the country’s heritage, he says he’s a “firm believer in Warren Buffett’s maxim – leave your children enough to do anything, not enough to do nothing.”

“But we are determined that the children will not inherit a wad of money. But I want them to think that if we’re fortunate, we could pass them a nice house and they could inherit a farm and then they can decide what they want to do with it or not.”

His eldest son is studying agriculture at school, of which O’Leary says he is “extremely proud”.

Whether or not he would encourage them to go into farming, he says he wants them all to go to college and get a third degree.

“And then I want them to at least have the opportunity to go into farming if they want or follow [another] professional career. I don’t want to prejudice what they do. But I would definitely like to… if I die they would inherit or get all 200 acres of land or 250 acres of land and then they can decide what to do with it. They can hire it, they can sell it, or they can edit it themselves.”

Mr O’Leary’s current deal with Ryanair expires in 2024 but the group’s CEO, 61, says he has no plans to step down.

“No, I have no intention of retiring. I am sure I will discuss with the board if they want me to continue for another contract. And as long as we can agree on reasonable payment terms, I would very much like to work here for a few more years,” he says.

When asked if he will ever retire, he replies, “I hope not. I wouldn’t want to retire.

“I have no desire to retire. We’re building a new management team at Ryanair… so we have very good managers under me. I probably won’t be working as hard at Ryanair in the next five or 10 years as I have for the past 30 years, but hopefully it will still take less time.”

Despite rising inflation, people can still afford to “fly Ryanair because we have the lowest fare,” but he concedes that fares will go up.

“What we are seeing at the moment is that prices through March, April and May are a little lower than in 2019, pre-Covid. They are currently between 5 and 10 percent higher between June, July, August and September. I think they will be more expensive in the peak summer months this year for a number of reasons.

“Asia is still essentially closed and Asians are not traveling to Europe. So this summer more and more people will be vacationing on the beaches of Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece. So there’s more demand and probably 10 percent less seating, and that’s going to mean advance bookings are stronger and fares are a bit higher.

“I think prices will go up 5 to 10 percent in the peak summer months this year. You won’t go 60pc or 80pc. And that’s partly because we’re adding another 65 aircraft this year.

“So we’re adding another 15 million seats to the market. In part, by growing so strongly, we will keep prices down.”

And although the era of cheap flights is not over yet, he warns of dangers.

“Our tourism industry also relies heavily on cheap flight access from Europe, so we can bring the Germans and Italians and the French and Spanish here.

“Our government has to fight against green taxes because green taxes will be very harmful for the peripheral countries.”