Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 4 July 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2022: Waterways Ireland
9:30 am
Mr. Éanna Rowe:
If we look at the tourism offering that is based on our navigations, the Shannon, the Shannon-Erne and the Erne are the three most important navigations. On the Shannon-Erne and the Shannon, Waterways Ireland along with Fáilte Ireland led the charge on the creation of Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, which is the fourth tourism destination on the island. Under Ireland's Hidden Heartlands we have a steering committee which comprises not only the local authorities, ourselves, Fáilte Ireland and some other State agencies but, crucially, the industry. From that Ireland's Hidden Heartlands steering group and strategy, we created the Shannon tourism master plan. This was the first ever holistic plan on this island to cover the entire Shannon and Shannon-Erne, which is hard to believe. As part of that Shannon tourism master plan there is a huge number of interventions that go into not only the bricks and mortar, as I would call them, around capital development, but, crucially, into industry supports. In answer to the question around those supports, they were led out by Fáilte Ireland in particular and by the local authority sector with things like rate reductions, supports for the development of social media presences, websites and all of that. These were led by Fáilte Ireland but under the Shannon tourism master plan.
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