John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

The Department is responsible for national tourism policy and in its work it seeks to influence the policies of other key Departments and agencies on matters that impact on the tourism agenda. It has little or no involvement in direct regulation of tourism.

On the tourism side, it works through its agencies as far as environmental issues are concerned; the key agency is Fáilte Ireland. As a Department, we are represented on various State environmental fora and we are actively involved in the steering group for the national spatial strategy. The Department has an input into the national spatial strategy and all of the regional planning guidelines, where it has taken a clear line in support of positive, balanced policies to conserve the basic physical tourism resource and allow for sustainable tourism development. We have also sought to ensure that concern for the environment was a key theme during the recent tourism product development scheme and that if there is to be a forthcoming scheme, it will have an even stronger environmental focus. A new scheme would ensure there would be a voluntary environment assessment.

Since we set up the environmental unit within Fáilte Ireland, it has produced position papers on environmental issues which impact on tourism as a means of influencing future development of the environment, including papers on litter, landscapes, wind farms and fish farms.

I reject Deputy Gogarty's contention that tourism is a polluter. There is no evidence that tourism, per se, is a significant source of damage to the environment and I reject any assertion to the contrary. It might be argued that tourism is responsible for a large number of one-off holiday homes but these are the product of local planning decisions and not driven by tourism policy or programmes.

The Department asked Fáilte Ireland to establish the environmental unit and it is now in place. We pursued this so vigorously because we understand that if the environment is damaged the industry will suffer because Ireland's green image is vital to it.

See this speech in context