Hanafin to raise scrapping of travel tax at Cabinet table
Tourism Minister Mary Hanafin has signalled that she will make a case to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to scrap the controversial €10 travel tax.
However Minister Hanafin has warned that the revenue may have to be raised in other ways.
Airline chiefs have claimed the tax is cutting tourism numbers.
Minister Hanafin saiod that the issue was raised with her by tourism chiefs as recently as yesterday, and she plans to bring it up at Cabinet during budget discussions.
"It is a budgetary matter but I will certainly be discussing it with the Minister for Finance to see are there alternatives," she said.
Minister Hanafin said the matter of whether the contentious charge had brought in the amount of money that had been anticipated on its introduction would have to be considered, as would the question of whether it was impacting on the tourist industry.
"I think we have to look at the overall picture," she added. "For example, Germany is now about to introduce an air tax, it looks like Great Britain are also likely to introduce an airport tax… We don't want to be doing something that's out of line with the other countries."
