From the article mentioned above:
There were the hapless travel agents who invited [O'Leary] to their Holiday World at the RDS. “Don’t waste your time with tour operators and travel agents. Book your flights with us and your accommodation independently and you will save money,” he started.
I'm not a travel agent, but due to my experience in the field people ask me sometimes to find them a good travel alternative, non-standard flight connections and other solutions, like air + train/coach travel. Quite often at least one of the carriers selected used to be Ryanair, with a wise strategy you CAN help people save their money with them. Recently I became more cautious, however, especially after a couple of unexpected schedule changes happened when I had to do my best to find an alternative solution in order to avoid my "silent guilt" in the eyes of travellers for spoiling their holiday.
Last week a group of thirty youngsters wanted to save on the group ticket. My solution, a flight with Ryanair to an alternative destination and a surface transfer would have saved them half of the sum the travel agency required. But then again... who will be responsible if anything goes wrong? Me? With somewhat unfriendly data processing, time-consuming check-in system (try to enter more than 8 pax at a time), and all that inflexibility making the adjustment- and error-prone group booking very risky and ungrateful. No, thanx. I was about to pay FR over 3,000 euros on behalf of that group... No, the group booking "system" shortcomings discouraged me from doing so. If I had more options, I could have made this purchase, but I just decided to direct all these potential pax to a real travel agent.
You might say I'm bashing FR again, I'm certainly not. Quite hopelessly I just try to demonstrate how so cost-conscious and mercenary carrier is leaking money, by not earning them.