Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has called Irish Water a “complete mess”, and said the government’s failure to restructure public services in recent years represents the wasting of “a glorious crisis” to make Ireland “a much more efficient low-cost economy.”

O’Leary said the government has missed the opportunity to implement major structural upheaval in public services in Ireland, opting instead to continue to “push the can down the road.”

Discussing the management of state and semi-state bodies, O’Leary labelled the HSE and Irish Water “complete messes,” The Journal reports.

"You have complete messes like the HSE and Irish Water where we think that just by establishing another quango and shovelling loads of bureaucrats into it we will have some improved services – we won’t,” he said.

“The more bureaucrats you have the worse it will get. We continue to run away from having that kind of fundamental restructuring that will make us a much more efficient, low-cost economy,” he said. He added that he felt Ireland is still “as good a base as anywhere in the world” for building and growing a business.

O’Leary was speaking at the Deloitte Enterprise Ireland CEOForum in Dublin Castle today and told his audience the middle earners in Ireland were being unnecessarily penalised with taxes, while the rich continued to benefit from unnecessary state support

The Ryanair CEO argued for “less bureaucracy, less regulation” for business. He said the government doesn’t understand the needs of business:

“I don’t think the government gets what business needs – what business needs is less government, less bureaucracy and regulation,” he said.

"Yet all I’ve seen in the last 5 years is more bureaucracy, more quangos, more bloody regulation – all of which is invariably useless and self-defeating,” he added.

Mentioning Jobs Minister Richard Burton’s claims the government focus had shifted towards enterprise was “just more mumbling.”