Mr. Cian ? Lion?in:

As a Department, our priority is to ensure that the long-term capital funding is there to develop projects and programmes that we have not yet even invented. We have an envelope under the national development plan and Fáilte Ireland gets a chunk of that, which is enabling it to deliver on the various projects under Platforms for Growth. One of the challenges that we have discussed with the agency is how, in the current environment, it spends its full envelope each year. Fáilte Ireland is taking what, to my mind, is a quite rational approach of overcommitting each year to ensure it hits 100% each year. As Ms Carroll mentioned, with the best will in the world, there will always be a delay in some projects. As a Department, and working with Fáilte Ireland, our aim is to hit 100% every year, where at all possible.

In the longer term, as a Department, we would certainly argue that there is a need for sustained and increased investment in tourism infrastructure around the country, and that is something we will pursue with colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and elsewhere. Right now, it is about making sure that financial pipeline is there and that it gets spent every year.