Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive outline of the background to what happened. I fully support what Tourism Ireland has done. It was excellent use of public moneys to purchase this domain name. Clearly, it was ludicrous to have Ireland.com in the ownership of an agency that does not have the promotion of Ireland within its remit. We have seen where similar cases occurred with other brands as a result of how domain names were handed out in the early years. The Minister and I are at one on that. I also accept that Tourism Ireland might not be in a position to purchase the database of subscribers. It was probably prudent to opt for just the domain name.

However, there is nothing of which I am aware that would prevent Tourism Ireland from establishing as a service provider, providing e-mail accounts and e-mail addresses as an enhanced component of the ownership of that domain name. Without purchasing the subscriber database, it could certainly offer the service, with the Ireland.com address, to those who wish to have it. Migration would take place naturally, with no additional cost to the State. There would be an added ability to promote the domain name if it was also offering it as an e-mail address. Many of the other search engines already do so, such as Google with gmail. It is a cost to them but they see it as an essential component of attracting people into what is their community. They do it quite successfully.

There is a very strong argument for Tourism Ireland, which is now offering a new portal or base for the consolidation of its web presence and the capacity to advertise to a broader audience, to add this service provision of e-mail. It is a loss leader for most of the search engines. Yahoo, Google and all the others do it. If Tourism Ireland thinks this through, it will see the benefits. I ask the Minister to raise this issue with the agency. If it would require an additional allocation of resources, I will certainly not criticise the Minister or Tourism Ireland. I would fully support it.

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