Web Summit correspondence looks damning for State

Nineteen days.
That's how long Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and Founder of the Web Summit, had to wait for any substantive response from the Taoiseach's private secretary, Nick Reddy, in relation to a plan enabling the Web Summit to remain in Ireland beyond this year.
With the hopes of keeping the enormous business and tech gathering in the country fading by the day, it took close to three weeks for any real engagement. Little surprise what happened next, then...
Of course, we now know the monstrous tech summit will head to Lisbon from 2016 on, but the desire to stay on Irish soil is clear from the outset of the exchange. "Our absolute preference is to stay in Ireland," Cosgrave writes in the very first message. "We want Web Summit to remain in Dublin long into the future," he says in the second.
Cosgrave made clear that what the event organisers were looking for was a clear plan on how to progress for the 2016 Web Summit, and those thereafter - "Not a penny, but a plan," the altogether catchy refrain. There were four major areas singled out; traffic, public transport, hotel pricing, and wifi.
None, you'll agree, seem objectionable. Certainly not, of course, when Cosgrave points towards the traffic and transport measures taken on the occasion of every major sporting event taking place in the same area of the city.
Indeed, sport also raises its head when Cosgrave considers the support given to the Irish 2023 Rugby World Cup bid. That event is estimated to be worth €1bn to the Irish economy, should it be successful; Web Summit 2014 was worth €102m, by the Taoiseach's own reckoning.
You don't need to be a mathematician to figure out that, by the time 2023 rolls around, the Web Summit would likely have made a greater contribution to Ireland's economy than the prospective tournament.
It's a story that's sure to run for some time - particularly with this year's event just weeks away. We'll have plenty more analysis and reaction on hotpress.com over the coming days.