Mr. Peter Nash:

The support of members of the joint committee and Members of the Oireachtas generally in attending some of our events overseas is extremely important to and valued by Tourism Ireland. To respond to Deputy Dooley's comments on the strategy for new and developing markets and how we could work together in this area, this year we have had an increase of approximately 20% in air access from the new and developing markets. The key priority is to use this significant increase in access as the basis for communicating with the trade and media in the markets in question and inform them that Ireland is more accessible than it was previously.

In terms of areas in which we could work together in future, the primary area is visas. There has been a degree of liberalisation in the issuing of visas, which has been of great importance both in terms of making it easier to get to Ireland and for us to get across an important message in far-away markets where Ireland is not well known. We should work together to achieve greater liberalisation of and new approaches to visas in respect of areas from which more people will come to Ireland.