Well, if they won't do it, what's stopping the captain from stepping up and then charging the company back afterwards? We can discuss for years how XYZ company is bad and is abusing its employees and the captain can either be limited by his company's lazyness or he can step up and show them how it's done. Worse case situation is that the captain is out of pocket for that expense but I'm sure anyone smart enough to get to that seat can also use this situation to his advantage, yes
I'm not sure why you're asking me that, ask Ryanair!
As I said, I have to do it and I do get reimbursed where necessary. I have no idea how that particular company deal with a situation like this - although it's obvious what they ought to do if they expect their crew to be fit to fly.