Mr. Éanna Rowe:

I thank the Deputy. I will deal with the issue of the Shannon and the lock passage figures he quoted on the fall-off. It is important to understand that lock passage figures capture those boats that go through our locks at certain periods of the boating season. They do not capture or are not a true reflection of boat movement on the system. In the period spoken about by the Deputy, the number of private boats on the Shannon has increased from 6,000 to 9,000. That is a dramatic increase in the private boating sector.

The second factor at play is that the cruise hire sector has completely restructured. The restructure of the cruise hire sector is based upon market demand. Market demand and the demand of customers for cruise hire has fundamentally changed in the past ten years. Short breaks are now predominantly what is required by the market and not the long one week to ten-day or two-week breaks, that we were familiar with 20 years ago. That also affects boat traffic.

On research, both ourselves and our colleagues in Fáilte Ireland, which is our national tourism development authority, have a great volume of data and research into the Ireland's Hidden Heartlands proposition, which Waterways Ireland was fundamental, with our colleagues in Fáilte Ireland, in having established to promote the Shannon because the Shannon is the key attractor in this area.

When the Deputy talks about lack of strategy, I am very surprised he is not aware of the The Shannon Mighty River of Ireland, which is the Shannon and Shannon-Erne tourism masterplan. This is the first holistic tourism-based strategy which has ever been created on this island that deals with the Shannon and Shannon-Erne waterways. It was formulated and led by Waterways Ireland, with our colleagues in Fáilte Ireland and the ten local authorities from Cavan the whole way down to Limerick. Some €100 million of investment is behind the Shannon tourism masterplan. It is a ten-year strategy for the development of tourism using the Shannon as the spine of that tourism offering.

Tourism demands have also changed for people on land. We have and we continue to develop, as I said, greenways and blueways, using our navigations as the fundamental building block of those tourism offerings and the Shannon blueway, which encompasses a 10 km stretch in the Deputy's own constituency, has attracted more than 100,000 visitors to Drumshanbo and the snake in the lake, as we call it, in Deputy Kenny's constituency. There is also the looped blueway offering from Clondra to Tarmonbarry in Deputy Flaherty's constituency.

The market has changed and the response of the cruise hire sector to those changes has been fundamental in their offering but private boating has also dramatically increased in the period which the Deputy mentioned from 6,000 boats to 9,000 boats on the system. We have had to up our game on the development of assets based on the growth in numbers and, as I said in my opening remarks, we have doubled the mooring capacity in less than 25 years on the Shannon to cater for that increase in boats.