It is “very important” that the UK stays in the EU and Ryanair has a role to play in helping to avoid a feared ‘Brexit’ next year, airline chief executive Michael O’Leary has said.

During a wide-ranging address to a British Irish Chamber of Commerce gala dinner last month, the airline’s chief executive urged the UK population to vote to keep the country in the EU ahead of the upcoming referendum in 2016.

“We’re now the UK’s biggest airline, which is why we do have a role to play in next year’s referendum. I think it is very important that the UK stays in Europe.

“We all have issues with Europe... I don’t want to be part of a united states of Europe, I don’t want to be adopting French social policies, they don’t work in France, and they’re certainly not going to work here either,” said Mr O’Leary, who has often an outspoken critic of the EU in the past.

“We should celebrate the differences that exist between European countries. We should continue to work together as an economic union because it has worked... It has transformed and improved the lives of citizens right across the European Union, ” he said.

He encouraged all of the Irish business people present to exert pressure on their British counterparts to vote to remain in the union: “It would be significantly better for the Irish economy, I believe it will be significantly better for the UK economy as well.”

He also paid tribute to Minister for Finance Michael Noonan for the decision last year to abolish Ireland’s “stupidly insane” air travel tax which he says cost the country 10 million visitors.

“That date is when tourism industry here began to recover. And it is recovering stronger and faster than any other tourism industry anywhere in Europe,” Mr O’Leary said , directly after he took a side-swipe at consecutive Irish governments’ “lousy” transport policy.

He continued: “It’s not because of brilliant marketing, it’s not because we’re nice to people, it’s because Michael Noonan and the Irish Government took a brave decision to abolish that tax... I want to play compliment to him and his Government at the time.”

The air travel tax of €3 was introduced by the Fianna Fáil-Green Party government in 2008, and sustained by the current Government until 2014. Overseas visits to Ireland subsequently increased by 12.1 per cent for the first half of 2015.

Ryanair is currently petitioning the British government to repeal its own Air Passenger Duty (APD) which he described as a “failed policy measure”.