Mr. Eoghan O'Mara Walsh:

I will respond on a couple of matters before Mr. Pratt responds. I agree with the vast majority of what the Senator said. The Titanic centre is a great example of a new tourism product or tourism investment that has driven demand and transformed the city. I was in Belfast yesterday and the number of new hotels being constructed in Belfast is remarkable. It is partly because there is a strong draw for Belfast with the Titanic centre.

I also agree that a hotel in a town is particularly important from a tourism perspective and even from a social perspective. My wife's family is from Roscrea in north Tipperary and it is in the same position. It does not have a hotel and the town misses it. It has a great castle, Roscrea Castle, which is in the care of the Office of Public Works, OPW, but it lacks that infrastructure. There is good news on the hotel front. We do some work with CBRE in terms of it giving us intelligence on what is happening. There was a period of about ten years when there were no new hotel developments around the country, be it in Dublin or elsewhere. That was a legacy of the property and financial crash and developers not being in the business any more. That is changing. Approximately 6,000 bedrooms are due to be constructed between now and 2022. They are much needed. The Senator mentioned hotel prices in Dublin. That is due to capacity and the fact that demand and supply are out of sync, so we need the additional hotels. The majority of the 6,000 bedrooms will be in Dublin but approximately 1,000 of them are being constructed outside Dublin. I do not know about Boyle per se, but we need a hotel infrastructure that is equitably spread around the country if we are to get real regional benefits from tourism.

The Senator probably knows that the midlands has just been given a new branded identity developed by Fáilte Ireland. It is something ITIC has been seeking for some time and Fáilte Ireland has got it over the line. It is Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, which goes through that area, and that will help to put the midlands in the shop window. That is important because ultimately private sector investment in hotels and so forth is largely a relation of how much demand there is in particular areas, and demand is fuelled by marketing and branding.

I agree there are huge opportunities in China. One of our big issues, and this refers back to the comment about being enabled by the Government, is that Ireland has very little profile in China. There is virtually no marketing money in Tourism Ireland, the overseas marketing agency, for countries such as China. We would argue that the budget cutbacks that were introduced during the austerity years must be reversed. That would allow Tourism Ireland to market effectively in places such as China, support those routes and achieve the full potential.

The current Government and previous Governments have got a great deal right on the tourism taxes. The VAT rate was the right decision and it has proven successful insofar as tourism has grown significantly since it was introduced. It puts Ireland in line with the rest of Europe in terms of the tourism VAT rate. Tourism VAT rates throughout Europe are around 9% or 10%. Ireland is aligned to that so Ireland is competitive. It is vital to retain that competitiveness, particularly if the British market is creaking.