What O'Leary actually said was to quote EU law, limiting pilots' working hours to 900 hours per year, therefore equivalent to 18 hours per week.
If that was allowed to slide by, it is another case of an interviewer not knowing their subject. The response should have been "red herring MOL. Is it not 2000hrs WORK per year? With 4 weeks leave = 41.67hrs/week. And is unpaid SBY and travel time to/from base calculated into that 'working time?"
Regarding place of work and travel times etc., the contractors are employed by a Dublin based company. According to MOL they are working on Irish territory (inside the a/c), but I thought that had been thrown out by the French because they clocked ON/Off in the local crew room. Therefore their start & end place was local, not Irish. If MOL wants the crews to be Irish based, but reporting for duty in another country, then surely you are operating out of base and the travel time & costs are duty time and for RYR or your company? However, if your contract says you are XYZ based then how can it be claimed you are Ireland based? If you are Italian, living & based in Italy, why can you not have an Italian company? KISS anyone? Does RYR not have German based crews? I thought this issue had been tested with ez's dubious UK based contracts for local crews. Easyjet was then required to have all German based crews on locally taxed contracts. What's different here?
Guess it just needs testing with the authorities; one day.