Lisbon Yes gets Ryanair funds

Ryanair has promised to spend a total of €500,000 on media advertising and “deeply discounted seats” in support of a Yes vote, with €200,000 going on press, posters and online activity, the airline’s chief executive Michael O’Leary said at a press conference yesterday.
O’Leary said that Ireland’s future success depends on being at the heart of Europe and our euro membership. “Our economic future will be destroyed by government and civil service mismanagement and the narrow vested interests of the public sector trade unions,” he said.
If the campaign was left to “Brian Cowen, Micheal Martin and all the other incompetents” it was likely the motion could be lost again. Voting Yes in the referendum on October 2nd made sense, if only it meant doing the opposite to what “the headbangers” and “economic illiterates” advocate in calling for a No vote.
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has issued new guidelines that commercial radio and TV stations do not have to give equal time to opposing sides in debates on Lisbon but rather the amount of airtime allocated to both sides must be fair.
The guidelines also require that equal time be allowed for party political broadcasts for both the Yes and No sides. In welcoming the new guidelines, Willie O’Reilly, chairman of the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI), said the BCI move was “an outbreak of common sense” as it avoided a strict adherence to a 50 per cent split in airtime.