Mr. Naoise Gaffney:

That is a great question and I thank the Deputy for asking it. Yes, absolutely, there is an opportunity here. IBEC published a 50-odd page report on this general issue in the fourth quarter of last year. In that we talk about the central division as well as the local division. Now that London is not participating there is the potential for a new venue to win the London prize, so to speak. Milan is currently in the hot seat and, until recently, Amsterdam was also in contention. Certainly it is IBEC's view that it would be fantastic if Ireland were able to make a pitch for that. We believe it should. There are many voices in Ireland that firmly believe that.

However, for the purposes of trying just to communicate a simple message, IBEC has focused first and foremost on communicating to our European partners as well as users of the system, to ensure that Ireland communicates to them that we are committed to the system generally and that we have a firm timetable for our own local division. Walk before you can run. We believe there might be something of a credibility gap if we start making bona fide noises now about why we should be entitled to the central division when we have not even given our partners a clear indication of how and when we plan to implement the local division. We are firmly of the view that this is something Ireland should look at. There are significant benefits that Mr. Sweeney can refer to, but let us get the ordering of these issues right. We will not be able to pitch for that credibly unless we can first get our house in order with respect to the local division.