Q25 Mr. Dave Anderson: When we were there last week I was quite tickled, you talk about the lack of product. The product that was shown to us was the five signature project. My only worry was that through all the different stages, if they all pull together and be positive, what it was other places would be forced out, so how would you cover them? What you are saying is that even they might not be feasible and give us a feel of that? The other thing is everybody we spoke to said that one of the biggest problems over there was issues about planning, everybody said that everywhere, the extent of it seems worse in Northern Ireland generally. Could you comment on that?

Mr Edmond: The signature projects are simply a tactical device to raise the profile of specific opportunities. At the point at which the signature projects have enough strength to be appealing, we may have something to sell, at this point in time there is not anything to sell within the signature projects. If I may illustrate that by reference again to the Giant's Causeway, the best single internationally recognised product opportunity we have, but it takes no effort to deliver people to the other attractions in the area such that it extends to world time, provides something that makes that visit worthwhile and delivers an experience that you were not going to get anywhere else, because it is not just simply about walking down or taking the bus down to the stones and wandering to the other stones and wandering back. St Patrick's trail has potential if it is properly done and we deliver enough of the earning opportunities off the back of it, but we are not doing that and the real issue is not the tactical products themselves. It is having the right strategy behind that capable of reaching the right people and I am not sure that we know who those right people are or if we know who they are we certainly do not want us to learn. Northern Ireland as a tourist product can merely defined best by what it is not and if we are trying to find what it is out of that, it has to be about how we deliver, who we are, what our identity is and where we are now. We have issues as a community with identity, but we can share many of those issues when it comes to trying to create a buck out of it. If we find a way to do that properly - but we cannot do it at tourist board level - we have to do it at the level of the individual hotelier, the individual restaurateur, the organisation that decides to develop walking trails in Belfast, walking trails to the Sperrins, the National Trust which has things for people to see, but we are not managing to put those things together, to build the strength and depth of product that people will want to come and see and we are not then managing, even if we have those things, to pick out about the things that will really sell. We have one of the strongest gardening tour products on these two islands, but yet who knows about it and who has ever been on the gardening tour that starts in Belfast and may take in some of the other opportunities? We have also been a bit insular when we talk about products, we thought about where they are and not what they connect with, so we have not thought about using the Chelsea Flower Show as the way into the gardening product for Americans - this is based out of Belfast -so we have got to think more particularly about the strategy that targets the right people and then use the signature projects or other projects to deliver the visitor opportunities.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT