Ahh, smith. Haven't heard from you in ages! Glad to see you are still alive and acting as the 'voice of reason' when it comes to Ryanair. Good man.
Just to give you a little 'food for thought' on your 'those who bought a job therefore they must be crap' assumption/generalisation/belief. Firstly the 50% success rate isn't an accurate figure and it hasn't been published. What has been published is that first and foremost, the main reason why people fail their upgrade is because they don't prepare for it. Like any command course, the Ryanair course is both tough and intensive (sorry, this fact may not fit with what you may like to believe). I have several TRE and LTC colleagues who have commented that the most able FOs that they have come across have failed an upgrade. Not because of an inability to operate, largely because they were unprepared for what hit them. However in order to give a little consolation, I'm sure with over 2000 pilots the odd one fails the course due to ability levels.
I don't think many euro-carriers would touch an ex FR guy. I know a lot of pilots who hate FR pilots for what they have done to this industry.
Who do you know smithy? The guy down the flying club who says that if he were in the industry he wouldn't touch us? Your employer - who is that exactly anyway? Our guys and girls have regularly pissed off to the likes of BA, bmi, Virgin, Emirates, Etihad, Singapore and Cathay. I don't know many who won't hire Ryanair pilots? I'll give you KLM/Air France - however they don't do much external hiring anyway because thats their policy. Small potatoes though!
54 aircraft will not be added to the total fleet number, the fleet number stays relatively constant, the new airframes replace "ageing" ones which used to be sold on to South American airlines as they approached their C checks, however that market seems to have dried up too.
There will be a net gain in fleet because there is growth. You are right though, they can't sell aircraft at the moment.