Further to the above, because I could not book the flight on the Ryanair website, I booked it on a third party site (booking.com). As it turns out, I've discovered that this was a rather silly thing to do, as I'm now locked out of the booking, because my passport shows a middle name and the booking does not (I never use my middle name in bookings).

So Ryanair are now saying that I will have to check in at the airport at a cost of EUR 55. This is bad enough, but I'm concerned that even then they won't fix up the name "problem" either, so denying me boarding.

Any experience with this kind of thing or suggestions as to what I should do to sort this out? Obviously booking.com (and gotogate the ticket issuer) are useless.

To add insult to injury, Ryanair are not prepared to accept the name on the booking as being correct, even though it's exactly the same as the name in my long-standing Ryanair account. Obviously they're just trying to make it as difficult as possible for 3rd party bookings...