ifc84 and tabu,
you may well be right that we were not dealing with Ryanair employees per se, but outsourced people (I think Swissport, in fact) but that is not the point.
The superb ladies at the "Ryanair" luggage counter were sporting Ryanair uniforms, as do the harrigans at the gate who are looking for 100 grammes excess weight in your cabin baggage.
They may be Ryanair people or not, but when you have a baggage irregularity, your last concern is who pays the salary of those who sort out your problem.
The personnel at my local airport are absolutely not Ryanair employees; as for those at STN, they are probably Swissport, but I could not care less who employs whom, I wanted my bag back, and these people have been doing whatever was needed to get it back, even though the initial problem was a gormless bint who picked up a different bag from her own.
Not Ryanair's fault.