Mr. Colin Neill:

I thank the Chair and the committee for the opportunity to present. As Mr. Roberts has covered the prosperity plan, I will give a bit of background into hospitality in Northern Ireland and its role in the economy. The industry body, Hospitality Ulster, was created 151 years ago, before Partition. It is by nature a membership body for the hospitality industry.

The hospitality industry in Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland's fourth largest private sector employer, with a €2 billion annual turnover and sustains 72,000 jobs. Over the last ten years hospitality has outgrown the Northern Ireland average for job creation and employment. Our sector grew more than 30% as opposed to the Northern Ireland average of 18%. We play a huge role in the agrifood sector. The hospitality sector buys a third of all Northern Ireland's agrifood and indeed we account for two thirds of Northern Ireland's tourism spend.

Mr. Kelly touched briefly on Brexit and the Windsor Framework. A very simplified, and I stress simplified, update on that in our context is that it has not really caused that many problems for beverage because a lot of our beverage is packaged on the island of Ireland. The beverage companies tend to be global operators and are used to a lot of customs paperwork. Where we have seen changes is in food service because it is based on a wholesale system. The majority of our food service comes through the red lane because the businesses have an island of Ireland footprint and want to be able to trade freely. Donegal is predominantly supplied in food service from the North.

On issues that would go across, Tourism Ireland and the growth of tourism potential in Northern Ireland is currently approximately half of what is could be so there are huge economic opportunities there. There are a few challenges such as the electronic travel authorisation that will be brought in and that will cause barriers. There are also opportunities. In particular, we have had initial discussions with the Tánaiste's office about joint programmes North and South and about skills particularly for young people and how we can help people who are not economically active into the economy. We have a huge opportunity because we have no barriers to entry and have jobs at every level.