Mr. Paul Gallagher:

I will try to answer some of the questions directly. I was asked if we have a line of sight on the number of full-time, part-time, seasonal jobs. I am afraid I do not but if I can find them, I certainly will furnish the information to the committee. Of the jobs growth, there are about 43,000 jobs, some 72% are in the regions. That tells the story about the health of tourism around the country. I would love to see the season extended and the pattern is starting to show that seasons are getting longer so that visitors are coming more in the autumn and spring than they would heretofore. Some of the key drivers are activity-based holidays, water in particular. We have such significant benefits in terms of our natural resources and they are major attractions. Some of the barriers to seasonal growth in tourism are the closure of visitor attractions, which close down or are open for a shorter period. Daylight impacts on people's days, so the day can be quite short. While the pubs are important, going to the pub at 4 p.m. can be done on one or two days in a row but one could not spend a week doing it. I agree with Mr. Dolan's point that Dublin's weakness in having insufficient rooms is an opportunity for the rest of the country to do better. There is some active programming by tour operators whereby instead of the arriving tours staying the first night in Dublin, they are being taken elsewhere. One will see that around the country in places such as Waterford, Drogheda, Kilkenny and so on that are full on a Friday night out of what I would call traditionally Dublin business. That is very good for the regions. Let me assure Senator Feighan that this will, in a sense, drive the OPW to do things a little bit differently because the visitors will be on the ground. The business operators in the regions will see the need to keep these people engaged and entertained and experiencing our products. They will drive the OPW to change its opening hours to reflect patterns of consumption. That is to be welcomed.

In regard to Airbnb, I would go a little further than my colleagues. I believe Airbnb should be regulated. I think the Revenue should have line of sight of Airbnb, where it is at a scale that is a real income. There were some shock stories on the radio recently about people having 40 properties in Airbnb. I see it as a displacement for families to set up and live in urban areas and around the country. The long-term outcome of that will be that school attendance will fall and schools and shops will not remain open and communities become stripped of other very essential services if Airbnb is allowed to take hook.

I do not believe it should be allowed to trade unfairly. As yet we cannot see the size of it. During busy periods Airbnb is incredibly large, especially in Dublin, and on quiet nights it is particularly small. It expands and contracts very quickly to meet market peaks. It should be done.

I was asked about the tourism policy document that I have critiqued as being out of date already. I do not have an answer as to what the targets should be. Next year the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, ITIC, will undertake wide-ranging research by way of in-depth interviews with the industry's top 100 business leaders. For the first time the tourism industry will write its own plan. ITIC will deliver tourism's plan for tourism and we will do it on a five-year window because anything over five years will quickly become irrelevant. We will try to follow the agribusiness which has been very successful in writing plans, but of course that is very dominantly anchored around some very large agribusinesses that can afford to produce these plans.

I was asked about seasonality and regionality. One of the other drivers is around the idea of capital investment. The industry has been lacklustre - I do not mean the agencies, but rather the private sector part of the industry - in being prescriptive about what we might need on the ground. In the first quarter of next year, ITIC will carry out fairly compelling research to try to identify capital infrastructure, which if undertaken in the regions in appropriate scale, could happily and I think will, anchor new activities for people to do and see right across the regions. There are plenty of areas where it could be better. The midlands brand or the Shannon corridor brand has been mentioned. When one gets to Galway and goes right, people in Donegal will also feel the same about tourism not having reached its potential. We hope to address that.

I am happy to say there is no dissent among the tourism body. We work very closely with the agencies. We are in a very fortunate position. We are a fairly "go-to" crowd. We tend to make things happen quite quickly. I do not think any other industry would reflect the level of co-operation we share and enjoy.

What does the industry do for itself? We do not rely on the State organisations, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, to help us paddle our canoes. We paddle with them, but we also contribute to that success. I will give a Dublin example. The Dublin hotel community this year and into next year will contribute €600,000 towards the marketing of Dublin in the UK, particularly around the Dublin brand, A Breath of Fresh Air. Many active people in the industry serve on marketing partnership groups. They go out to the different overseas markets to engage with the industry in those markets about what is necessary for them to drive business to Ireland. Mr. Gibbons has mentioned the central marketing partnership, which really is an extension of what was the tourism recovery task force, which, in itself, managed to turn around tourism's fortunes from 2010 onwards, where we lost 1 million British visitors in about 18 months.

To put some perspective on our success, the visitor numbers from the US to Britain have declined by about 1.5 million at the same time as we have doubled ours. They would like to join Tourism Ireland in marketing Ireland and Britain in the United States. Members of the committee will be glad to know that we will not do that. That gives an indication of how proactive the industry is and how compelling the industry has been in its ability to turn around its competitiveness, its offering, the quality of its product and particularly in support of the brands that Fáilte Ireland delivers. Those brands have been enormous hooks on which Tourism Ireland has been able to engage the markets to sell Ireland in a new way.

As Mr. Quinn said, county jerseys going out to sell Ireland is more about the county feeling good about the county than actually driving visitor numbers to Ireland. I would share his view. When tourism spend is fractured to do that activity, it has no benefit except that we all just feel great. Employing people and having Exchequer returns are far more beneficial to tourism than wearing jerseys - except for the green jersey.