Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

Very substantial changes to the tourism structures and bodies have been made in recent years. Tourism Ireland was established and is working on an all-Ireland basis, with buy-in from our colleagues in Northern Ireland. Fáilte Ireland also has expanded its remit quite substantially. Clearly, it is not possible for every county to promote itself internationally. The funding required for that would be way beyond the capacity of any county. Therefore, it is important the programmes being shaped in the tourism agencies are developed in a holistic way and are successful in attracting people to the island of Ireland.

Many of the local tourism bodies do an excellent job in producing high-quality brochures which invite tourists to their areas, where high-quality products are available. They are also targeting specific markets. For example, we see growth in walking tourism and hill climbing, which is a massive business compared to what it was a few years ago. The Deputy is correct that sports tourism is also growing. We discussed earlier the potential in terms of conferences coming to this country. We could do much more in that area.

The review of the plans for the next few years is indicative of the fact that things have been going very well because the targets that were set up to last year were well achieved. We went through the 8 million tourist barrier in 2007 for the first time, which is double the population and a magnificent achievement. The spend in total revenue is around €5.8 billion to €6 billion so it is a very important industry to this country. Approximately 240,000 people are employed in the total hospitality area so it is probably one of the largest employers in the country, if not the largest. I agree with the Deputy that we need to keep the tourism and marketing spend well focused to continue to develop and enhance the tourism numbers to the country and to have the ability to be flexible, as we need to be this year when there are serious international pressures on people's ability to travel, unlike in previous years.

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