Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and apologise for being late. I was in and out of other meetings. From reading the opening statements and looking into the figures, they show that before Covid, we had 11.3 million annual visitors, €5.9 billion was spent in tourism and the sector employed 325,000 people. It is important to acknowledge the work done by both Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland to deliver those figures and employment to the State. I wish Mr. Gibbons well in his retirement or semi-retirement, whichever it may be.

I fear for the future, to be honest. We heard the figures will return to 2019 levels by 2025. I honestly do not think that will happen - it will not happen. We heard about the challenges we have with accommodation and that people are deciding to go to other countries. People cannot get booked in. I know people involved in running bus tours who are losing contracts because people are deciding to go to Scotland, Wales and places like that, rather than coming here.

It is a pity that a small number of hotels are damaging the rest of the industry. I was away three weekends ago in the Connacht Hotel in Galway. It was packed and we got great value. That was the weekend before St Patrick's weekend, and in a major tourism centre in Galway. There is value to be got out there. Unfortunately, a small number of hotels are giving the entire industry a bad name but members know that is not the case throughout the industry. That is why we have always been very supportive of maintaining the VAT rate, and there was strong cross-party and Government support for introducing it.

On careers and vacancies, I spoke to my local education and training board, ETB, only a couple of weeks ago. I also spoke with Ms. Campbell from the Irish Hotels Federation and the Restaurants Association of Ireland about trying to develop a centre of culinary excellence in the midlands, which would service the tourism and hospitality industry. However, the ETB tells me it cannot even fill some of the existing courses and people are not taking those courses or coming into the industry. Has Fáilte Ireland met the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and career guidance teachers? This seems to be an issue, not only in tourism. At the meeting I attended, we discussed the therapy professions, including speech and language and occupational therapy, and the reality is we do not have people coming through the third level system and qualifying to be employed in the system. The same applies in the tourism and hospitality industry. We need those working in our schools to get people to focus people on career paths where there are strong job opportunities. If we do not do that, we will start losing the levels of activity we built up before 2019.

We will not get back to where we have said we want to get to in respect of increasing our numbers by 2032. I think we will struggle to get back to where we were pre-2019. I ask the witnesses to respond to my question regarding discussions with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, the ETBs and secondary schools career guidance teachers. Have any such discussions taken place?