David Norris (Independent)

I am grateful to my colleague for sharing her time and I welcome the Minister of State back to the House with which he was once so familiar. The last section of Senator Quinn's motion deals with capital movement and investment. The news there is not bad. I have material which suggests we experienced a 35% increase in venture capital investment in the first quarter of 2005 compared with 2004. That is good. We are now the fourth most significant destination for US manufacturing and investment overseas. That worries me a little politically because I think it means we lickspittle the Americans frightfully because we are terrified they will pull their investment out of Ireland, not that they would.

I very much agree with Senator Henry. I listened to young people on the radio who all said they would not dream of staying in Ireland because it was far too expensive and inconvenient. Senator Henry is also right about restaurants. Last weekend I attended the most magnificent dinner in Cathal Brugha Street. The food produced by the final year students there was superb as was the service. We have certain things going for us but the expense, particularly of hotels, is terrible as is the way they treat their guests. That they insist on guests staying two nights has been highlighted regularly on radio recently. If one wants to stay only on Saturday night, the hotel will say one must stay on Friday and Saturday nights. If there are rooms available, they should be available to clients. They should not be able to say "No" and to gamble because it would be better to have people stay Friday and Saturday nights.

I heard of somebody who had been given a voucher for €600 or so. She was hit with this requirement to stay two nights, to which she agreed. However, there was an extra €50 surcharge if she did not have dinner in the hotel. It is absurd to try to penalise somebody because they do not want to stay for dinner. The hotels are terrified people might go elsewhere for dinner.

It sounds very much as if there is a cartel of some kind operating in Kilkenny and the Minister of State should look into that. The radio shows telephoned hotels and got the same prices each time. It is quite an extraordinary coincidence. The Competition Authority should look into that issue.

The defence the hotel industry makes is that it is under pressure because it has significantly higher rates of VAT compared with other countries. There may be an element of truth in that but it also employs a significant number of young eastern Europeans. I have a very strong suspicion that it is not quite paying them the same rates it might pay other people. It is getting cheap labour, bullying its customers and giving significantly bad value.

I have been travelling but a little bit more modestly than my colleague, Senator Henry. I was in Galway, a beautiful destination. I dropped into Morans of the Weir in Clarinbridge where I met a former Member of the other House. He was there with his sister and brother-in-law from America who could not wait to get back because of the prices here. They were also hit by the requirement to stay two nights. That is wrong. As Senator Quinn usually says, the customer should be king.