Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

Since last year a significant problem has emerged in the car rental industry. It is a lucrative industry because those tourists who rent cars tend to be high-end spenders. The number of cars available this year is having a real impact. The same is happening in the United States and Spain, where there is a major shortage because finance companies are not interested.

I have spoken to the Minister for Finance about this to see if we could find a mechanism to get the rental car that goes out for a couple of months then comes back in and is included as part of the scrappage scheme. That would have been helpful so I will talk to the Minister for Finance before next week. Deputies would support that because it is a crucial aspect of the tourism product that we must have available. We are probably not far off 25% of where we were in rental car numbers only two years ago at the peak. We do not need the peak numbers but the number of vehicles on the road should be somewhere in between. The finance companies, however, are not interested in financing.

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