Mr. Jerome Casey:

I will convey Deputy Michael Colreavy's kind regards to Mr. Felim O'Rourke who is Bahrain and will not be back until next summer.

On the question of Fáilte Ireland, local tourism initiatives are undertaken independently. That is the way it is done in every other country we have studied. It does not mean, however, that Mayo County Council will take a major decision to invest €10 million in the Wild Atlantic Way or a section of it. I worked in Cement Roadstone, each subsidiary company of which had a limit for its managing director. The managing director of Cement Roadstone had a limit of €100,000 for excavating shovels. He submitted a purchase order for a shovel at a cost of €100,000. A young girl in the office who was new to the job said there must have been a mistake and refused the request. He was hot-headed and asked where his "blink blink" shovel was? It was a Ruston Bucyrus shovel which cost €100,000. Somebody else had a limit of €50,000.

As one cannot make decisions on small but worthy investment projects in County Leitrim - €3,000 for one or €4,000 for another - because it is totally counterproductive to gather the amount of information needed to be sent to Dublin, it has to be done locally. If it is done locally, it will help to extend the tourism product, not market skim, as happens in the case of decision-making in Dublin. Having said that, limits will be set for individual investment decisions and a budget allocated based on population and the level of dependence on tourism and so on. It is not rocket science; as it is done elsewhere, let us try it. The centralised autocratic system in place is not delivering the goods.

How much comes back from a €1 million tourism investment? There are some large figures put forward for the numbers dependent on tourism - a figure of 180,000 has been put forward. That is the figure for tourism and all other amenities such as eating, drinking and sleeping. As the tourism input is fairly small, the number dependent on tourism is not 180,000. Unfortunately, some of the tourism representatives, as well as the Minister in a radio interview ten days ago, drop all of the qualifications and just the use word "tourism". A figure of more than 190,000 was mentioned, but it is nothing like it, rather the figure is between 40,000 and 50,000. It is half the number of full-time farmers and almost double the number employed in the IFSC, but it is still not 180,000 or 190,000.

Can the provision of pylons and wind turbines and fracking damage tourism? I cannot say anything about fracking as I do not know anything about it. Mr. O'Hara has made a contribution on the matter. I cannot comment on turbines because I own a small 6 kW wind turbine. If we had time, I would tell the committee about the cost of being at the cutting edge of technology and there supposedly being a Swedish bearing. Instead there was a knock-off copy.

The guy involved went bust.

I remember looking at the proposed pylon route from Northern Ireland. If the cables are not put overground, it will add 3% to electricity prices nationally. I agree wholeheartedly with the Mayo county manager; there is no choice in this matter. It is unfortunate that we do not have more people living in villages instead of being dispersed in one-off housing in country areas that may have to accommodate structures such as pylons in the future.