Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

What we said before in regard to NewERA in particular is still the ambition of the Government to implement. Nobody ever said NewERA would be implemented within the first three months of Government. I certainly did not say that and I was the chief architect of it. Let us wait to see what happens in this regard.

I want to focus on the choices available to us. They are choices in terms of how we spend a modest amount of money to get the maximum bang for our buck. We have targeted tourism, for which I am unapologetic. When I was in opposition as spokesperson for transport for the last six months before the general election, I was utterly frustrated by Irish aviation policy. Over the past three years we have seen a 30% drop in passenger numbers going through our three main airports and a 40% increase in passenger charges - that is the Fianna Fáil record. This is why airports such as Shannon, Cork and Dublin airports are under such pressure at present while we try to pay for a €600 million new terminal - it was arguably more expensive than that but that was its stated cost. What we are trying to do is to reshape the tourism industry and make it cheaper to come to and holiday in Ireland. That is a good initiative which makes sense. One of the easy ways of getting stimulus into an economy is to bring people here to spend money. This can be done, for example, with cruise ships coming into Cork harbour, of which there will be 58 this year with an average of 3,000 passengers per ship. It is also about building passenger numbers in a proactive way through Dublin, Cork, Shannon and other airports.

This is what the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, is focused on when he talks about getting rid of the travel tax. Can anyone imagine putting a tax in place to charge people for the privilege of coming to Ireland to do business or to holiday here when we are trying to bring people here to get stimulus-----

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