Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The carriages should be going west and south in the night-time. That is certainly how the airline industry works. The capacity goes a certain way in the morning.

Next, I want to ask about an issue that I raised as a parliamentary question. It was responded to yesterday evening, and I thank the NTA for that. Licences are granted by the NTA for day trip coach tour operators. I will not name them, but I think we can all guess which ones they are. There are a few of them operating in the country and they go to the NTA for licences. They seek licences on certain routes to iconic tourism sites in the west and south of Ireland. Increasingly, they are relegating the status of some of these, in their own words, to “photo stops”. These are photo stops along the roads. The coach will pull in, 50 passengers will get off, and this is dangerous. They will take a photo, they will get back on the bus and they will go again. This has totally hollowed out tourism in the west of Ireland. These iconic sites were once the magnet to bring people to the west. They get out and take a photo and they are gone again. It is Instagram tourism. Whether we like it or not, through the NTA’s licensing deals, it has become almost complicit in this, although maybe unwittingly so.

We are asking for more sustainable tourism, which would happen if we did not have these express services, which is what they have become. They shuttle around these narrow roads in Dingle and west Clare and drop these passengers off. They have breakfast in the morning in Dublin, they have dinner in the evening in Dublin and they stop in one place for lunch. It is hollowing out tourism, it is not safe, and it is not sustainable. I know that the NTA will say that this is not fully a function for it, but surely there needs to be some additional criteria in this licensing. We are not speaking about A to B services here, but tourism. There needs to be some stopping along the way. There has to be some value for the west of Ireland. I do not think this would happen in other countries where there is coach tourism that they would allow the shuttle service to go in and out, take a photo and go again. I would love if the NTA could put its eyes on that situation.