Mr. Paul Keeley:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend the meeting. It has received our opening statement, but in the interest of time I will give an overview of the key points. Tourism is a key economic engine that makes a sizeable contribution to communities across the country in the form of jobs and its support for the sensitive development and management of our natural and built heritage. At the heart of Fáilte Ireland's work to develop greater spatial spread of tourism are our four regional experience brands, which are the Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, Ireland's Ancient East and Dublin.

For each brand, we have developed a regional tourism development strategy in partnership with local authorities, State agencies, community groups and industry partners. These strategies will ensure a focus on sustainable tourism development with benefits accruing to local communities and to nature. To deliver the strategies, we are creating local destination experience development plans, again with key stakeholders across every region. By the end of this year we will have 24 of these plans active, and 36 in place by the end of 2025. The backbone of our regional strategies is a capital investment programme of €320 million in attractions, outdoor changing facilities, greenways, trails, and the wider public realm. We are currently working on nearly 120 enhancement projects and are progressing well with our pipeline of 27 large-scale attractions nationwide. While we recognise that we will encounter variations in anticipated timelines for project delivery, trying to accommodate these changes with a fixed annual capital allocation constrains our ability to manage our capital pipeline dynamically.

Encouragingly, the growing demand from visitors to explore nature offers real potential for rural Ireland. The natural heritage and cultural assets found in our national parks, forest parks, inland waterways and coastal waters have the potential, if developed appropriately, to be a key motivator for visitors. Recognising the important role tourism plays in supporting rural communities, Fáilte Ireland has been awarded €68 million through the EU just transition fund to deliver a transformative regenerative tourism scheme for the midlands, supporting rural communities directly affected by the move away from peat production by creating new employment and enhancing the local environment. We are currently developing a funding scheme and as part of this we are undertaking public consultation this month in the eight counties covered by the scheme.

While we hope for a strong summer season, the sector faces several challenges that could impact on rural tourism in particular. First, 35% of all registered tourism bed stock outside Dublin is now contracted to the State. This puts business survival in the wider tourism ecosystem at risk. We estimate that it will cost the non-accommodation tourism sector over €1 billion in lost revenue this year and a significant amount of this will be experienced in rural areas. The lack of availability of hire cars and the discontinuation of the repayment of VAT on the vehicle registration tax, VRT, scheme in 2019 has contributed to increased costs within that sector and this directly impacts the capacity to explore rural Ireland. Finally, rising insurance costs and the difficulty of securing affordable liability insurance is adversely impacting adventure tourism, festivals, and events.

We look forward to questions from the members.