Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

——not just myself but all the Ministers, Ministers of State and others who travel over the St. Patrick's Day period. It gives us a focus in capitals and destination all over the world and gives us access around St. Patrick's Day to meet multinationals and tourism operators. We get a huge audience worldwide for this.

I understand that people would raise the issue of costs as costs are of course involved, but this must be seen in terms of what it would cost to run a marketing campaign. There is a marketing budget this year of €37 million, which is going towards the tourism campaign. However, if one considers what we will get in terms of television, radio and media exposure, as well as exposure to politicians and trade fairs and everything around that, it does the country an awful lot of good.

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