Ms Joanne Grehan:

I will be extremely brief. Our colleagues who were involved in the original greenway in County Mayo, Padraig Philbin and Anna O'Connor, have visited County Kerry, County Galway and a number of other locations in order to communicate with the groups there.

If members wish to learn about the greenway experience in County Mayo, it is available for them to tap into.

On cruising and winter tourism, I am a firm believer that the glass is half full and anything is possible, provided one has the right people around the table. We are a coastal county in an island economy and we must make more of our marine resource for leisure and the economy.

I am grateful for the information on the blog, to which I will definitely direct people on the Mayo.iewebsite.

Deputy Tom Fleming is correct on the issue of mobilisation in the United Kingdom market. It was remiss of us not to mention it. We are working with all chapters of the Mayo Association. Last week, we joined 600 people from Mayo who travelled from Manchester, Birmingham and many other communities in the United Kingdom to attend an event in London. We are tapping into this community. On the importance of access, Ireland West Airport Knock operates routes to all these locations and people are being brought here from those markets. We believe in having a presence on the ground and the mobilisation officer will do some of this work in the UK. Access is critical and the statistics show, as Mr. Casey will testify, that if one brings people directly into a region, they are magnetised within a certain radius of their entry point for three, five or seven days. From that perspective alone, regional access is critical.

In terms of return visitors, referrals and the reason we are not getting repeat business, I am always struck by our experience in this regard. To speak to Deputy Fleming's point on the need to offer a sectoral as opposed to geographical experience, I drive a Cork registered car which was sold to me by Liam Hassett, a Kerryman, on match day a couple of years ago when Kerry met Dublin. If communities in counties Dublin, Kerry and Cork were to refer tourists to other areas, for example, to Mayo for genealogy reasons or to Cork for water based recreation, their experience would improve, which may speak to Mr. Casey's point about our lack of return visitors.