Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

The measures only commenced in July. Therefore, it will be a few months before we have the statistics from July, August and September. That will give us a chance to judge the effect of them then. The measures I am most interested in are jobs in the sectors concerned and tourist numbers. I am much more interested in the reduction being passed on in terms of new jobs being created than, necessarily, it being passed on directly to consumers. It was a jobs initiative after all. I am pleased to see that at least in the restaurant sector employment appears to have increased. We do not yet know about the hotel sector but we will have a good idea of that when the quarterly national household survey figures come out in a few months time.

On the airlines, the response was not what we had expected. Airlines welcomed the proposal to abolish the travel tax but were not prepared to commit to do anything unless other measures were introduced, including reductions in airport charges, which we could not manage. I will announce agreements in the next few weeks on co-operative marketing. Essentially, the money that we are continuing to draw from the travel tax will be invested in co-operative marketing with airlines and tour operators. I will announce the details of that when it is finalised in a few weeks time.

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