Mr O'Leary, the mercurial chief executive, the self-publicist supreme, the millionaire for the common man, is prone to shooting from the hip. He is often entertaining doing so and is, in person, incredibly engaging.

But this time, his comments weren't made in a broadcast interview or in front of a bank of cameras. They were made at the campaign launch of Enterprise Minister Peter Burke in Mullingar. The event itself saw Mr O'Leary take to the stage to urge attendees to vote for Mr Burke.

"We need to elect politicians who will get shit done. And I can think of nobody here, certainly in the current government, who demonstrates more action, more energy, who works harder and I think is true to his principles than Peter Burke."

He would follow that up by musing on the current makeup of the Dáil, saying that the Dáil was "full of teachers".

"There is nothing wrong with teachers. I love teachers — I have four children — but I wouldn’t generally employ a lot of teachers to go out and get things done," he said at the event.

For the benefit of completeness, there were 19 former teachers in the 33rd Dáil. There were 48 landlords.

Fairly mild

The comments themselves are fairly mild, generally speaking, for Mr O'Leary. 

I don't think there's a soul in Ireland who would have thought that his preferred Dáil would feature exclusively educators or that he would not prefer to see people from private enterprise run the country.

But in context, with a crowd at a Fine Gael event laughing along, the comments pose a problem for Fine Gael, whose leader Simon Harris said he was "annoyed" at the comments at a party event on Monday morning. 

The comments were crass, he said, inappropriate. Mr O'Leary was not part of the party's campaign and would not have any involvement going forward, Mr Harris said.

"I'm annoyed about this. Annoyed about this. The issues that teachers care about around the country are the issues that I care about," he said, pointing to classroom sizes and other concerns.

But should Mr O'Leary have been in the room at all?

He is the chief executive of a company which regularly lobbies the government, both officially and through the media, a huge company and massive employer. 

Mr Burke is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, not just the local TD.

That Mr O'Leary has called for the resignation or sacking of ministers is by the by, he is a private citizen and fully entitled to air his grievances. 

He is entitled to become involved in the political process and he is fully entitled to state his preference for a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael government.

But should he be invited - his words - to launch the campaign of a man who, at least in theory, has a role overseeing all businesses in the country? 

Simon Harris told this writer on Monday that he doesn't accept the contention that Mr Burke has a role in regulating Ryanair. 

Mr Burke's department oversees a number of agencies which could, however, have cause for interaction with the airline. 

While there is no suggestion that he would be led by his relationship with Mr O'Leary, the public has a right to expect that ministers are at an arms-length from those who would seek to change government policy in their narrow favour.

Put another way: if Darragh O'Brien launched his campaign arm-in-arm with a property developer, we would have questions, surely?

Officially lobbied

Since Mr Burke became a senior minister in April, Ryanair has officially lobbied the government four times, according to the lobbying register, never to his department. 

These have ranged from general aviation updates to the airline's ongoing row at Dublin Airport in relation to flight slots, to stamp duty on the trading of shares. 

But Mr O'Leary's personal campaigning has been a different beast altogether. 

Able to command headlines whenever he speaks, Mr O'Leary has had a long-running issue with Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, earlier this year calling him "an idiot", calling for his resignation consistently and painting Mr Ryan as a nuisance to the aviation industry.

But his political interventions did not begin with the passenger cap at Dublin Airport. 

He has previously recorded a video on behalf of Mr Burke's 2020 campaign, saying that the now-minister was a "good guy".

“I’ve seen at close hand over the last year or two the great work on the ground Peter has done on behalf of Longford-Westmeath constituency,” he said.

Mr O'Leary had previously stated his preference for Leo Varadkar in the party's 2017 leadership race, but his most consistent forays into politics were his repeated attacks on Enterprise Minister Mary O'Rourke, a fellow Westmeath resident and Fianna Fáil TD. 

During bitter personal clashes with Mr O’Leary, Ms O’Rourke was depicted sitting in a bath in an infamous Ryanair advertisement. 

Ms O'Rourke would later say the businessman's antics gave her "angst in bucketfuls and, indeed, often drove me to tears".

Asked on Monday if he saw a conflict of interests in Mr O'Leary being at the launch, the Taoiseach was adamant it was not. 

Mr O'Leary, he said, was free to do as he wished in a democracy. 

The attendance of a chief executive at an Enterprise Minister's launch was little different from the Agriculture Minister meeting farmers, he said. 

When it was posited that a ministerial meeting was different to a personal launch, Mr Harris said that "farmers go to launches, teachers go to launches", saying that "Michael O'Leary was at a local event in the constituency in which he resides".

But Mr O'Leary is not just a local and he's not just a businessman and he didn't wander in off the street. 

He is the chief executive of a major Irish company who was invited — again, his words — to launch the campaign of a sitting member of Cabinet. 

For Fine Gael to claim distance from his comments does not hold water.

Ultimately, this campaign controversy will blow over, but it should be remembered for context the next time Mr O'Leary lobbies on the airwaves.