Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am not a full member of the committee but I am grateful to get an opportunity to speak to our guests today. I know most of them.

It is incredible what Fáilte Ireland is doing, particularly in my area with the Hidden Heartlands and with Mr. Paddy Mathews and all the team. We were left behind for way too long but that, I am glad to report, is changing rapidly. The amount of investment and development and the whole Hidden Heartlands project for the Roscommon-Galway region is fascinating. In my own town, the Famine museum and the incredible extension going on there worth €5.5 million will increase the tourism population into our town. That type of tourism may not suffer as much. There was Covid and now the war. At present, people are really down. We are all down. If there is any sign of a settlement of that war, every one of us will feel that extra energy to go again and tourism will be huge. I would be quite optimistic because the budget for tourism this year is quite good. It is well increased.

The real issue I want to talk about here, which has been mentioned by several members, is staff. It is no exaggeration to say that, over the past weekend at home, I was approached by four different people from hotels and restaurants. I was approached by one lady who runs a very successful family hotel which, unfortunately, has been closing one or two days a week because of staff issues. Unfortunately, one chef was not able to turn up to help the other chefs recently and she spent 14.5 hours without a break cooking, helping the chefs. It was an enormous strain, she told me. She could not keep it up. They have quite a young family. People do not realise the stress being caused to people in hotels and family-run restaurant businesses. There are many chefs who worked in the Army or in other institutions who are semi-retired, and some of them would come back. They would not go into full-time work but they would do 20 or 30 hours a week. They would be really good people. Maybe Mr. McGowan and Ms Sweetman will say this is not workable but what I am saying is we should try to get those people into some sort of crash course. They would be fantastic people. They would put their shoulders to the wheel. I believe it is worth targeting them. We need to do something like that because there are many people in restaurants and hotels in trouble and, to be quite honest, they are completely deflated at this stage. It strikes me more every week when I go back to my base in Roscommon and more people are coming to meet me about this problem.

This question may already have been answered. How much of our budget is going towards staycationing this year? Will there be a big campaign on staycationing?

Hillwalking has become very popular, especially in my area. Slieve Bawn, beside Strokestown, has become very popular. They put a wind farm there a couple of years ago and everybody went silly about it, but now they have opened up all the history of it and the roadways of it and there are thousands upon thousands walking it. How much money will go into promoting that this year?

The staff question is the real one. I would like to hear their comments. Would it be possible to follow-up on that particular issue of staff who are definitely available and who probably would say "No" now because they do not want to go into a full week's work but who could fill important gaps in the industry?