Call for plan to win Web summit back

The Government has been urged to do all it can to win back the Web Summit from Lisbon after the opposition claimed it has so far failed to properly tackle the PR crisis.

Renua Ireland and Fianna Fáil lashed out at the Coalition as Government ministers attempted to side-step ongoing claims from summit organisers over a lack of action on specific concerns raised in recent years.

Speaking as the summit opened its doors for the first of three days of events, before moving to Lisbon next year, Renua leader Lucinda Creighton said the Government needed to draw up a plan to win it back.

While saying she was “not planning on wading into” the row, Ms Creighton said “the Web Summit should be in Dublin next year” and that “it’s really lamentable that it’s going to Lisbon”.

“The war of words is unfortunate. It’s even more unfortunate that the Web Summit is leaving Dublin, it’s a fantastic showcase for Dublin, for Ireland, there were about 3,000 people in the city centre last night.

“Calculate that in terms of the huge return for the city and for the country, just in economic terms forget about the PR and all that.”

Fianna Fáil was equally critical of the alleged inability of Government to keep the event, with tourism spokesman Timmy Dooley claiming his Government counterpart Paschal Donohoe was warned a year ago “rip-off” hotel prices when the summit was here meant there was a “risk” it would to go to another country.

However, despite summit organiser Paddy Cosgrave further claiming yesterday government funding for the event in recent years “amounts to nothing more than hush money” over the problems, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney said the Coalition is “not getting into responding” to every concern.

“The decision has been made to move to Lisbon next year, good luck to him on that, hopefully the Web Summit will find its way back to Dublin in the not too distant future,” he said.