Thanks for that level headed post mathers_wales_uk, everybody is responsible for ensuring a safe and on-time departure, no matter what department they are from. The handling agents have a tough time in keeping good staff when you consider they have to keep their costs as low as possible to give demanding airlines like Ryanair the kind of contracts that they want.
Out of interest with Ryanair not being able to pull boarding cards, are cabin crew trained to do this? Not that it's rocket science or that bmibaby ever gave us training for it, but presumably in case you make a boarding error you need to know what to look out for and also it's Servisair's gate so they might want to try to board the flight with minimum interference.
The KISS brand from Menzies isn't actually used anymore, it was retired as it were two years ago when they got the Thomas Cook contract and decided to become a more rounded handling agent. Although Menzies handle Ryanair at a couple of Spanish stations and do handle other low-cost airlines in the UK, the Ryanair contract for something like 30 turns a day would be a massive overnight increase in what they handle and as mentioned there are severe penalties when flights are mishandled.