Mr. Tim Fenn:

Perhaps I will put a context on this. I cannot comment on individual prices. Similar to other representative bodies, we are subject to certain constraints under competition law. In the interests of consumers it is essential that businesses set their prices independently. This is a legal requirement and therefore we are not in a position to make any comments that would be potentially interpreted as seeking to influence hotel prices.

We are not here today to defend prices but we wanted to provide some context to what we believe is a misperception, not a misrepresentation, in the market as to what is happening. That is why we look at the average room rates for the years and compare them with other cities and with previous years, etc. The key challenge for us at the moment is that Dublin does not have enough supply. Dublin is a very attractive city and there is great value in it but the problem is that we have come to a stage where there will be nights, particularly perhaps for some of these football matches or big concerts, where Dublin does not have the capacity to deal with it and there is a challenge around that.