Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House and wish him well with this Bill. Bord Fáilte has provided a great service to the country since 1955, as has CERT since 1963. On the last occasion the Minister was in the House I mentioned interaction between Government agencies, including the Irish Trade Board and Bord Fáilte, promoting the tourism product and other products in the United States and elsewhere. There should be greater interaction between those agencies and each should know exactly what the others are doing. CERT has done a tremendous job in regard to the provision of catering staff and has produced many fine chefs and people in the catering industry.

A number of speakers alluded to our competitiveness in the tourism market and the fact we are pricing ourselves out of the market. I do not know what the Minister is going to do to make us more competitive but we are not competitive in regard to hotel room rates, green fees, food, etc. Years ago we were uncompetitive in regard to transport costs, the price of diesel and petrol, but those prices have come down, yet we remain uncompetitive in the areas I mentioned.

We have gone through two bad years following the foot and mouth crisis and 11 September. Those two events had a negative effect on the Irish tourism market and next year every effort must be made to help the tourist board and tourism industry. The Minister stated that the authority will have a number of jobs to do, including product development, marketing of domestic tourism on the island of Ireland, with which I fully agree, research, strategic planning, specialist product marketing, promotions in niche markets, regional marketing and implementation of specific initiatives, such as the tourism sport initiative. I welcome the Minister's initiative in terms of getting people, such as Padraig Harrington, and other great sports people to market the country.

Statutory functions of the authority will also include the registration and grading of certain tourist accommodation, co-ordination of activities on the regional tourism authorities and tourism and the environment. I hope there will be no bias towards any region and that each will get its fair share. There was, undoubtedly, a bias towards the south east, the most developed region. The reason was that the most money was pumped into it. I urge the Minister to give all the regions their fair share of marketing and ensure each region is marketed equally.

I welcome the setting up of this authority and wish it the best of luck. It is the right approach as we need new initiatives and branding. Will the new authority have a new marketing logo? If so, will it be an expensive outlay? When Aer Lingus developed a new marketing logo, it cost a lot of money and I do not believe it was of any great benefit. In this case, however, a new marketing initiative and logo are important.

Section 13 places a lot of responsibility on the Minister who may direct the authority to do something. I hope this will not interfere in the day to day running of the authority. I am not sure I have seen such a section in previous Bills concerning semi-State bodies.