Low cost carrier Ryanair will open 9 new routes from Dublin from April 2014 as well as increased frequencies on 8 existing routes, which will deliver an additional 700,000 passengers per year and support 700 new on-site jobs at Dublin Airport.

This new capacity is the final part of the 1 million passenger growth that Ryanair promised to deliver at the main Irish airports as a direct result of the Government’s decision to scrap the €3 travel tax from April 2014.

Ryanair’s growth at Dublin from April 2014 will deliver: 9 new routes to Almeria, Bari, Basel, Bucharest, Chania, Comiso, Lisbon, Marrakesh & Prague

Ryanair also announced that it will create over 300 new direct jobs in Ireland in 2014, for pilots, cabin crew, customer service specialists and software developers as the airline rolls out an extensive programme of customer service and website improvements.

These 300 new Ryanair jobs will be in addition to the 1,000 indirect jobs that will be created at Dublin, Knock and Shannon airports to cater for the 1 million passenger growth which Ryanair will deliver from April 2014 following the scrapping of the travel tax.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “Ryanair is pleased to deliver 9 new Europe routes to/from Dublin and over 1m new passengers for Ireland (which will create over 1,000 new jobs at the Irish airports) in direct response to the Government’s welcome initiative to scrap the €3 air travel tax from April 2014.

“A critical component of this growth will be 100 extra weekly flights into Dublin from Britain, which will reverse the recent tourism declines in UK visitors coming to Ireland. Ryanair’s fares on these new Europe routes start from €29.99, which is half the price of Aer Lingus’ lowest fares (€60) to Lisbon, Madrid, Nice and Prague.”

“We are also proud to confirm that we will create over 300 new direct jobs in Ryanair in Ireland in 2014 to crew our new based aircraft and to help us roll out our very exciting growth plans, which will include significant improvements to the Ryanair.com website and to our industry leading customer service.” O’Leary added.