Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Deputy's comments and concerns. I agree that Ireland.com is a good purchase for Tourism Ireland. It will be in public ownership, or at least in the ownership of a North-South body. A lady in the United States whom I know quite well and with whom I stayed for some time has an Ireland.com address, and she asked me what .ie meant at the end of all my e-mail addresses. In America all addresses are X, Y or Z.com and having the domain name Ireland.com in the ownership of Tourism Ireland is very valuable. The only concern that might arise is that when Ireland.com becomes a tourism portal and website, allowing anybody to have that address might cause people to believe they are somehow associated with official Ireland, the Government or tourism when they are not. However, perhaps that is not a reasonable concern. Everybody knows that if one's address is gmail, it does not mean one works for Google. I understand what the Deputy means.

I do not know what can be done in this space. The duty of care lies with The Irish Times because only the domain name was bought, not the customer database. I will discuss it with the chief executive of Tourism Ireland to see if there is a way to facilitate people retaining those addresses, provided it does not prejudice the purchase of the domain name.

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