Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

There is no doubt that this economy needs a kick start and needs to grow. One area that could help is the tourism industry. I ask the Leader, as a matter of urgency, to have a debate on tourism. Recently, the hotel industry, golf clubs, restaurants and so forth have brought down their prices. They have made this country more attractive and competitive as a destination for tourists, not least for the domestic market. We need a debate on this and on reducing VAT for the food and tourism industries. In the aftermath of the Volvo race and the northwest car rally, we should examine how we performed and how valuable those events were to our economy. We could have a very valuable debate on tourism.