Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

That will happen. We cannot sell hardship but everything that has been said about fiscal adjustment is an attempt to sell hardship to the Irish people. It has to be accompanied by a strategy that gives a shock to the economy in order to get it growing again. We will have to take a sectoral approach to the economy and take what the economists call supply side initiatives. I am sure the Minister heard the business lads in Trinity speak about supply side economics while he was studying law and liberal arts. The stimulus package is a demand side measure but the advantage of supply side initiatives is that they are small and do not cost a lot of money.

I will outline a very simple example. London is full of Chinese tourists at present. The city is like the Ireland of 30 or 40 years ago, when one would get a belt of a camera from a Japanese tourist if one looked at the Blarney stone. Is Fáilte Ireland asking why these tourists are not adding three days in Ireland to their packages? The reason is the difficulty in getting visas. If there was a way of fast-tracking their visas, it would cost nothing because it would only be an administrative matter for the Department of Justice and Law Reform and the Department of Foreign Affairs and we could attract more tourists. It will not have cost anything even if it did not work.

I am aware the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, was offended by being held up to ridicule in the advertisements that Michael O'Leary placed in the newspapers.

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