Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their helpful contributions. I echo the words of the Cathaoirleach in wishing Mr. Gibbons the very best in his future endeavours. I thank him for his extraordinary service as an exemplar in the use of social media in promoting our country at every opportunity. His work was astounding and I thank him.

Many members have raised the issue today of the fears around an increasing shortage of tourist accommodation in Ireland as a whole. Mr. Gibbons elaborated further to say we need, and we all wholeheartedly agree, to spread the benefits of our tourism economy to all regions. He pointed out there is a significant shortfall arising in rural accommodation. Yesterday Galway County Council published the emerging preferred route for the new greenway from Athlone to Galway, which will be an extraordinarily impactful and transformative piece of infrastructure for the west, especially for the Hidden Heartlands, which have yet to have any significant investment in their tourism offering. That will allow us to complete a greenway the whole way from the east coast to the west coast, something which no other country in the world can offer at this time.

We have had witnesses before the committee recently from the Irish Self Catering Federation, ISCF, pointing out that the impending legislation around short-term letting has the capacity to undermine completely or certainly significantly endanger the offering it makes to tourists, particularly in the aforementioned rural locations that would not be well served by hotels and other accommodation. I wish to ask Mr. Kelly, Mr. Gibbons and indeed Mr. Ó Lionáin how they suggest we could rectify or accommodate the concerns of the ISCF and indeed anybody involved in offering self-catering accommodation throughout rural Ireland.

We are arriving at a point, especially with greenways, where we hope we are going to have a significant influx of new tourists into areas that have never experienced tourism before. Consequently, we need to be exceptionally careful about considering legislation that may drive people out of providing short-term accommodation in rural Ireland.

The legislation in question seeks to do two things. The first is to provide for all tourism providers, be they a sprawling hotel in Dublin city centre or a cottage on the west coast of Clare, to be registered with Fáilte Ireland. All the providers think it is a wonderful idea and I wholeheartedly agree. Then we are suggesting we look at all these short-term lets and determine how many of them can be used for long-term letting to families in urgent need of homes. We are proposing to do those two things at the same time, whereas I suggest we do the registration piece first. Let us get an accurate assessment, rather than something on the back of an envelope, of how many accommodation offerings we have and what form each takes, that is to say, whether it is a hotel, somebody's spare bedroom in Lahinch, a shepherd's hut in the back garden of a house in Belmullet and so on across the board. Only then can we make a reasoned assessment of how many of those short-term lets could realistically find their way into the long-term letting market. We need to do that first. We need to spend perhaps the next year in providing for that to happen. Then, and only then, should we seek to impose some sort of legislative pressure on all providers of self-catering accommodation to regularise themselves, seek planning permission, or whatever may be necessary to continue doing what they do very successfully. If we are really ambitious about spreading the benefits of tourism into every single townland, we must be exceptionally careful in how we move forward on this. I would be interested in comments from Mr. Kelly, Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Ó Lionáin on that.

I have a final point on cycling tourism, which is a subject close to my heart. The global market for cycling tourism is estimated at $120 billion per annum. That is predicted to grow by about 9% every year up to 2030. There is a significant growth opportunity emerging around e-bikes in particular because they provide an opportunity for people who would not normally engage in cycling tourism to do so and enjoy all its benefits. Germany is a huge tourism market for Ireland. In 2021, 42% of cycling tourists in Germany used electric bikes and the figure is similar in the Netherlands. E-bike charging stations have been provided by the local authorities along some of the EuroVelo routes in the Loire Valley and the banks of the Rhine. Those routes are already successful in attracting cyclists, but there is now also acknowledgment of the opportunity presented by e-bike tourism. Ireland could and should become one of the world's best cycling tourism destinations and could easily plug into - excuse the pun - the emerging market around e-bikes, which has so far gone untapped here. I am working with one or two visionary accommodation providers who are seeking to develop Ireland's first-ever e-bike tourism loop around beautiful Lough Derg and the Hidden Heartlands. There is a really exciting opportunity presenting here and I would love to get the views of those involved in promoting Ireland internationally as a tourism destination on how they see our cycling tourism offering growing and developing in the future.