Mr. Michael Cawley:

The points are valid, and I will endorse of a few of them. The diaspora is a very valuable resource that we should tap, and if the number is 30 million or 40 million people it has enormous potential.

In this regard the committee will be happy to know that The Gathering has maintained some momentum in a number of communities. They are tracking people and bringing them back. Fáilte Ireland is actively involved in a much smaller and almost informal way. There is no part 2 of The Gathering this year but there is so much momentum in certain communities that it is happening regionally, not nationally. We will be revisiting that issue.

The member who referred to the Atlantic issue is right. Apart from the Bay of Biscay in France, we have a monopoly on that view and that is why the Wild Atlantic Way is so popular. I was speaking to people in Tourism Ireland today. The feedback they are getting from Germans, for example, who are essentially landlocked other than the North Sea, has been phenomenal. That name will have great resonance, I hope, with people when they arrive. People will spread out into the various areas and the local communities will take advantage of that.

A key question was asked in respect of access to the country. Coming from where I come from, I am a great believer in filling up the funnel as much as possible. I am not saying this for Ryanair but for any airline. This is an island country and access is critical. There are examples of other countries that have similar isolation. Malta, Cyprus and the Canary Islands spring to mind. Each of those has had crises in tourism and they are far more dependent on it, percentage-wise. They have nothing like the foreign direct investment we have. Tourism is 35% of GNP in the Canary Islands and it is similar for Malta. Cyprus is even more dependent on tourism. Each of them has taken the route of improving access over the last years and revived their economies. Malta is the great example of that. It has sustained unbroken tourism growth for the last six or seven years. For historical reasons Britain is its biggest market and when there was a crisis in that market, Malta improved air access.

One can improve anything; one can always improve things. We will be critical of things in a constructive way, for example, there is much to be done about signage. There is much to be done on many things, but I am a firm believer in getting people in. Then they can find their own level. One will find out through surveys and research what people want. Ultimately, when they come here, the experience is that people will come back to Ireland. Apparently, only 14% of people in Britain have been to Ireland, but they all come back here. That is a lesson for us. If we get them here, we have enough. Not everybody is happy. One gets the letters that say they have been disappointed with the experience and so forth, but the general experience of people here, provided they are not coming for the weather, is that they come back. That is not unique. People go back to Spain and other places frequently, but not every country has that attribute. We have it. Our historical research from Ryanair is that many people travel frequently with us in and out of this country. The way to tap into that is to enlarge that number. I have every confidence that when we get people here, we will cope and that we will get a large number of them back again. That is the test.