Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I would not underestimate the value of the Dublin convention centre, which has the potential to attract major conferences, particularly medical, scientific and pharmaceutical conferences. Our aim is that when people come to Ireland for these that they take an extra few days to play golf and visit the other regions.

The airport tax is a hot potato as some would say it is impacting on tourism. We do not yet have any evidence to state that is the case because so many other factors are impacting on tourism. The difficulty is that the Department of Finance reckons it will bring in €125 million this year and that would be difficult to find somewhere else. Over the coming years we would like to keep it under review.

We have a tourism response group which meets if an issue arises. It meets regularly. I attended yesterday's meeting with Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland, the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, the Irish Hotels Federation, the Incoming Tour Operators Association, representatives of the bed and breakfast sector and the Department. We regularly get together with all the representative bodies.