Mr. Tim Fenn:

The first point I will make is tourism is a great story. We have been recovering, but our industry, no different from any other part of the economy, is suffering from growing pains. We speak about capacity and prices in Dublin. Dublin has 18,900 bedrooms which are sold every night. During 2015, the occupancy rates in Dublin were 82.2% throughout the year. This was the highest in Europe, along with London. At the same time, average room rates in Dublin were the 15th highest in Europe at €112. This year, our occupancy rates have increased. We do not have final figures yet for the full year, but we believe London has dropped so we will be on our own at the highest occupancy rate and we will be a long way off the top with regard to the average room rate.

The key point about Dublin is we do not have capacity. What happens in Dublin, like anything else, is when only a few rooms remain the prices may change a little, which is what gets all the press attention. With regard to competitiveness, Dublin would not be full if it was not competitive. The prices charged for Dublin day in, day out on any of the booking engines or metasearch engines are great value. There is no doubt there is an issue with regard to capacity. Earlier, we were asked to comment on how many rooms there might be. Fáilte Ireland has done a report with Fitzpatrick's and it ranges from 5,000 to 7,000. We must ask ourselves how this came about. Five years ago, we had a crash and nobody expected the recovery to happen so quickly. In the interim, all the money that might have gone into investment found its way into the land of distressed assets. It was much cheaper to buy a hotel that was on the market. In fact, one could buy an existing hotel for half the cost of building a new one. As a result of the recovery, we are at a stage where it is great to see an increase in activity in the market. The market is beginning to happen. Sites are available and we have developers and hoteliers, and we will see an increase. There will be growth in the capacity in hotels in Dublin in the coming three to four years. Perhaps the difficulty will be that in the coming year or two years, it will not be as much as we would like.

We have to be mindful of the fact that tourism does not sit on its own. We were asked to comment on whether Airbnb was a safety valve. One has to be extremely careful because this is a major problem worldwide. In Ireland it was traditional to have bed and breakfast accommodation, some lady or gentleman would rent out a room in their house and the money would help in sending their children to college or whatever. Now apartments and whole properties, not just rooms are being taken out of the residential market. The residential market is full. When one takes properties out of the residential market it contributes to other problems in the residential market. Today is not the day to go into this issue, but it should not be lost on the members present. Planning is key. If one plans to build for rental short-term private accommodation that is a business, it should be covered under appropriate planning. It should not be a case that somebody is allowed to take property out of the residential market and use it for business without appropriate planning. We are conflicted on this but the local authorities should take a serious look at it. If they do not, we will end up with the same problems they have in New York, Paris and Barcelona and tourism will not be well served by this.

I will now deal with the marketing spend. I will not go over the detail but the way we see it is that there has been a 45% drop in the marketing spend. We are losing share voice. The return on investment to the Exchequer is phenomenal and is not just about the amount of money that goes into the Exchequer each year from tourism, it is about the fact that it is creating economic activity in parts of the country where no other inward investment or other entrepreneurs can have a meaningful involvement.

In terms of the Rugby World Cup in 2023, we think there is a wonderful opportunity that Ireland and the IRFU could be in the game to host it. We are working with Fáilte Ireland, the same as we worked with the FAI, Fáilte Ireland and other agencies for the UEFA Euro 2020 bid, which was successful. We would hope that would happen.

A question on rural pubs is slightly left-field for us. Rural pubs are an integral part of communities and they are also an important part of tourism. I suppose we were very happy to see that in the past two budgets that the excise duty was not increased. The reality is that every increase - and the excise in Ireland is one of the highest in Europe if not the world - takes money out of the pub. It makes it more difficult for the publicans to survive. I suppose the other aspect is the rateable valuation, where the revaluation which certainly affect us also affect the pubs. If one wants to help the pubs, one would ask for a reduction in excise duties for on-trade sales and ensure that local authority rates are rolled out right across the county.

The seasonal and regional aspects of the tourism business are key. Mr. Dolan will speak on that topic.