Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

As the Senator will be aware, I am here on behalf of the Minister for Finance who does not propose to accept the recommendations, primarily because there was evidence of a scheme being abused in the past and he wants to stamp out such abuse and because of the difficulties that would arise, for example, in allowing car scrappage in the case of some cars but not all, etc. It is an issue of major concern to the tourism industry, but, on the other hand, tourist numbers have fallen and I am not sure whether we can directly relate one to the other. As I said, the Minister for Finance is not willing to accept the recommendations at this time.