€7,500 Charity Donation to Germany’s Minister for Fianance

[White Cap]

Ryanair-Nachrichten
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News Release--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

07.10.08
€7,500 Charity Donation to Germany’s Minister for Fianance

Ryanair, Europe’s largest lowest fares airline, today (7th Oct) confirmed that it has written to the German Minister for Finance (Mr Per Steinbrueck) offering to make a donation of €7,500 to a charity of his choice in order to settle an action taken by him personally against Ryanair for using his photograph in a humorous advert in April 2008. Ryanair had originally offered to make a donation of €5,000 to the Minister’s charity of choice and agreed to refrain from using his photograph again. However, the Minister refused this offer and has chosen instead to sue Ryanair in an attempt to win personal damages.

Given that Minister Steinbrueck has the much bigger issue of the banking crisis to deal with, and in an effort not to waste the Court’s time, and taxpayer’s money, Ryanair today offered to increase its charitable donation to €7,500 to settle this unnecessary action by Minister Steinbrueck.

Speaking today, Ryanair’s Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs, Jim Callaghan, said:

“We regret the fact that the Finance Minister has chosen to involve the German Courts in this matter when Ryanair had already agreed not to use his photograph again and has offered a generous donation to a charity of the Minister’s choice. However, the Minister rejected Ryanair’s offer of a charitable contribution and went into court seeking damages which clearly do not arise in this case. No politician can honestly claim to have suffered any damages when a topical advert features their image in the press. This claim is absurd.

The Minister is now seeking to profit personally from this matter, despite the fact that he is a political figure and Ryanair’s ad highlighted a matter of considerable public interest - i.e., the Minister’s failure to achieve cost savings – which is permissible under German law.

Ryanair has therefore increased its offer of a donation to a charity of the Minister’s choice to €7,500, in order to avoid wasting any more of the Minister’s, or the Court’s, time on this issue. We sincerely hope that the Minister will accept this generous offer and win a substantial donation for his favourite charity.”