Despite detractors of the "tourist project" at Goffs saying the term is a misnomer, Padraig O hUiginn, an adviser on the development, defends its credentials. He views the development as another stage in Ireland's tourism development.

"We expect 60 per cent of income from overseas tourists. The rest of it will come from approximately one million adults resident within an hour's drive.

"All the figures from other countries in these kinds of developments show that 70 or 80 per cent or even 90 per cent of income comes from tourists," he says. One of the foremost experts on tourism, Mr O hUiginn has an impressive CV as a former secretary to the Department of An Taoiseach, a former Bord Failte chairman and a former chairman of the National Economic and Social Council, contributing to the tourism aspects of the Programme for National Recovery.

"We are the fastest growing tourist industry in western Europe, and we are way ahead of the average world trend.

"We now employ 100,000 people in tourism. In a few more years there will be more people working in tourism than in agriculture," he forecasts.

He is still on the board of Bord Failte and is an adviser to Dr McDaid, the Minister for Tourism. But he dismisses as "a dead duck" any suggestion of a conflict of interest in being an adviser to Irish International Tourist Outlets as the company nurses its application through the planning stages.

"What conflict of interest is there if I am a member of the board and I am involved in building this tourist project in Co Kildare?" he asks.

He points out that while there are four million domestic and overseas tourists a year passing on the Naas dual carriageway, only 135,000 of them visit the Japanese Gardens.

"They all bypass Naas, but we are going to go into Kill because we see this traffic passing and we are going to stop it."

The advantage of the proposed location is its proximity to day-trippers from surrounding areas - domestic tourists - for the purposes of the factory outlet centre. Mr O hUiginn stresses that the project fits the State's tourism development plan.