Ireland's tourism figures are "grossly distorted" and businesses in the sector believe they are "grossly inflated and unscientific", Fine Gael's tourism spokesman, Mr Jim Higgins, claimed in the Dáil. He said the figures included football fans returning from Manchester United or Liverpool matches as well as people on a day business trip and those returning from holidays.

However, the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, said he could not imagine "a more comprehensive way" of doing the figures or "a more comprehensive organisation than the Central Statistics Office for doing so".

Dr McDaid said there was a 7 per cent or 500,000 drop in tourism numbers last year, although official figures were not yet available. According to figures for 2000, there were 6.1 million tourists and €4.83 billion (£3.8 billion) in revenues.

"I travel through Dublin, Shannon, through Knock regularly and nobody has confronted me ever with a questionnaire," Mr Higgins argued. Nobody had ever asked him who he was or how long he had been out of the country.

"So how can you come up with those global figures of six million tourists and billions in earnings? There is a major question mark in relation to all the figures that are thrown out about tourist numbers and the revenue that is supposed to accrue from the tourist industry."

Dr McDaid said the issue had been raised a number of times before, "There are five different areas in which we gather our statistics - through the CSO, the country of residence survey, the passenger card inquiry by the CSO, Bord Fáilte's tourism numbers and revenue and Bord Fáilte's surveys of overseas tourists.

"You've also to the UK tourism survey and the domestic tourism or Ireland travel survey."

All of the visitors were separated, he added. "In 1997, the survey took in 497,000 people and determined through those figures the exact breakdown of who was Irish and who wasn't. So there might be questions raised as to what the figures exactly are, at the end of the day they have one thing, they are all bringing funding into the Irish exchequer".

He said these "hit-and-miss" surveys from a variety of agencies "would seem to underpin the point that they believe the figures are grossly inflated and most unscientific".