An estimated £15£20 million (€19.05-€25.39 million) will be generated for the economy by Ireland's two home matches this year in the Five Nations Championship.

Tomorrow's game against France and the England clash on March 6th are due to attract more than 30,000 overseas rugby fans in total to Ireland - and as fans go, they tend to be a high-spending lot.

A survey organised by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce at last year's Ireland v Scotland game found that visiting supporters, from overseas and parts of Ireland outside the capital, blew an estimated £7.3 million over the weekend. Almost a third of this expenditure was on accommodation, more than a quarter on food and drink and some 15 per cent on entertainment.

"If anything, we were slightly conservative in our estimate," says Mr Declan Martin, economic director of the Chamber, "as we only interviewed the principals in a travelling party who were attending the game. We didn't ask the wives, for instance, how much they had spent if they had gone shopping."

Indeed, a second survey on the game, commissioned by the IRFU, estimated the same weekend to be worth almost £10 million to the economy.

Unlike the Chamber study, however, the IRFU report included spending by Dubliners.

Carried out by the UCD Smurfit Business School Marketing Department, it found that 11,990 Scottish supporters visited Dublin for the weekend, spending £5.09 million. More than half that total was spent by Scots who were not attending the game but had travelled over for fun.

In the second home game against Wales last year, the same research team found that 20,321 Welsh supporters travelled, spending an estimated £7.26 million. Irish supporters spent an additional £4.5 million.

"Rugby games are a huge money spinner for the city," says Mr Martin, "especially now that more people are coming over with their families and making a full weekend of it, staying in a hotel and going shopping more."

The Chamber study, carried out by Lansdowne Market Research and Fitzpatrick Associates and sponsored by Bailey's, estimated the Scotland game had generated the equivalent of 317 full-time jobs for one year in Ireland.

In addition, it found a majority of overseas visitors (56 per cent) said they would return to Dublin as a direct result of the Irish "rugby experience".

"Then, there's the TV exposure," says Mr Martin. Last year's England v Ireland game attracted 6.8 million viewers on BBC, compared to just 4.5 million for England v Wales.

"In France, there is always good TV exposure of the Irish games. That can't but help either."