Ms Ruth Andrews:

If I can jump in there before Mr. Gallagher does, I am delighted to tell Deputy O'Sullivan that I was one of those people who was actually down in west County Cork discovering its delights for two weeks during the summer. While I had to work down there it really was the first time I had spent so much time exploring how fabulous the whole area around Crosshaven was. I will not go into it but I could tell the committee about my holidays forever. It certainly has made me think about spending more time in that part of the world and indeed up and down the Wild Atlantic Way. Domestic opportunities, in terms of investing more in promoting what we have here at home, are going to be critically important and it is one of the recommendations we made in the task force's report. There is definitely great opportunity to improve main holiday stays in particular. We need to look at the product in that respect to maybe enable certain products to pivot a bit more towards family vacations etc. In terms of domestic holidays, we will always have that opportunity. Fáilte Ireland does a terrific job year-on-year and had a fantastic new campaign, before Covid hit, to promote tourism and it set targets about growing domestic tourism. The one thing we need to remember is that 75% of tourism in Ireland is international and while we can always look to improve the revenue we make and the number of domestic holidays taken, unfortunately it is never going take over from the revenue and the export income we get from tourism which globally is about international visitations.

On marine tourism the Deputy is absolutely right. People need to experience it the way we did and to look at what the likes of Crosshaven has and to think of what it could be if we were to invest further in marine tourism. There are huge opportunities there and ones we should not miss. Fungi is a case in point. When one looks at what one dolphin has done for one area and even the talk around that which, by the way, went well beyond our own talk in the last week about missing Fungi; it hit the airwaves over in Canada, the United States and became a talking point everywhere. It just goes to show the natural marine wildlife that we have and as long as we are careful and we manage it in a very sustainable way, which is very important as well, there is a real opportunity around that.

Food is a critically important part of tourism. It is almost an international travel currency these days. Again, through Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, we had invested a considerable amount of time and investment in creating a whole food festival for the autumn period which we started last year. Unfortunately we were not able to continue that this year but it has not gone off the radar. Food is critical as part of the experience of tourism generally so it is something we need to be very mindful of. Sustaining that kind of food to fork and that whole quality of the food we offer is important. It is interesting that the research overseas has often shown us that, for some reason, people do not expect to get good food when they come to Ireland. However, when they have visited, the experience they have had is second to none and they are very clear about that in all of the research we do so we do need to dial it up and there is an awful lot more opportunity in that. We have covered that in the recovery plan as well so it is definitely an are we can look to improve upon. I will go back to my colleague Mr. Gallagher.