I enjoyed Diarmuid Doyle's rant about Michael O'Leary and Ryanair in yesterday's paper (22 March) which was unfettered by either facts or accuracy.

Firstly, our objection to the government's €10 travel tax is that it is neither fair (it is a regressive flat rate fee) or avoidable. Nor is the DAA – a government-owned airport monopoly – €15 departure fee fair or avoidable.

Therefore every tourist visiting this country from 1 April will have to pay €25 just for the right to leave! This makes Ireland uncompetitive and unattractive and will accelerate the collapse of Irish traffic and tourism at a time when other European airports and governments are reducing fees, taxes and charges to stimulate traffic and tourism.

Secondly, you are perfectly free to object or dislike Ryanair's fees and charges, but at least you can choose to avoid them. If you don't like the airport check-in fee, use web check-in. If you don't like the bag fee, travel within our increased 10kg carry-on allowance entirely free. If you don't like our credit card fee, use Visa Electron – it's free.

These fees are not "unnecessary", they are simply designed to encourage passengers to travel in a manner that minimizes Ryanair's costs and allows us to pass on even lower fares.

Diarmuid omits any reference to the fact that Ryanair remains the only airline that is committed to lowering air fares – our average fare in the last quarter fell 9% to just €34 (including baggage fees) when Aer Lingus' average short-haul fare is more than double this at €87. We are also the only airline that didn't introduce a fuel surcharge at any time over the past few years. When oil prices rose to $140 per barrel we simply took the hit.

Ryanair continues to berate the government-owned DAA monopoly for its awful service and its high airport charges, which at €15 per departing passenger are the highest in Europe. Most other European airports are reducing their fees in order to attract traffic growth. At the DAA monopoly, they are raising fees and causing traffic to collapse (down 12% in February alone), a decline that will get worse when the government introduces its €10 travel tax from April.

Finally, it is impossible for Ryanair or Michael O'Leary to "dominate a debate" when you are challenging a government-owned airport monopoly, protected by a government department (Transport), which builds facilities that the airlines don't want, at 10 times the real cost, and keeps increasing the charges to passengers irrespective of whether this causes passenger numbers to collapse or not. Sadly, you can't have a "debate" with a monopoly; all you can do is campaign to expose that monopoly, its inefficiency and the abject failure of this gutless government to introduce promised competition at the state's airports.

In the meantime, Diarmuid can relax, safe in the knowledge that Ryanair's fares will always be substantially lower than competitor air fares.

Stephen McNamara,

Head of Communications,

Ryanair Head Office,

Dublin Airport.