Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy Olivia Mitchell, for tabling the motion. It is timely in terms of the Cabinet reshuffle and I congratulate the Minister. I listened to her on the radio this morning and she was right to talk up the Department. The tourism product is something on which we can hang our hat in moving the economy forward.

The Minister should seriously examine the cultural landscape of rail tourism and the landscape possibilities and permutations we have for it. I have been beating the drum on this for a while. The Minister should sit down with the new Minister of State with responsibility for sustainable transportation, Deputy Ciarán Cuffe, because he has already planned to try to push the western rail corridor. In fairness to the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, he has been an advocate of rail along the western corridor and there is a drive towards putting rail tourism on the map in the west. The Minister should follow the commitment we bought into constitutionally in the 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Agreement and look at the possibility of interlinkages in the transport sector. The British Irish Parliamentary Assembly has backed a motion for rail connectivity on an all-island basis. That has passed at British, Irish and Northern Irish level and what it needs now is proactivity at governmental level in this country.

A Chinese citizen who decides to visit Belfast must obtain a holiday visa and that is fair enough. However, if that Chinese tourist decides to take a trip from there to Donegal or Dublin, he or she must obtain a second visa. The all-island agenda provides an opportunity to consider a single visa and a single point of entry for foreign tourists. The former Minister was not aware of this anomaly when I raised it previously. The Minister should seriously consider it because it creates bureaucracy and inaccessibility for people from outside the European Union who want to visit this country.

I am willing to work with the Minister as an Opposition spokesperson with a keen interest in tourism from a county, Donegal, that has always been furthest from the minds of those in the tourism industry. We have opportunities. Last year, 400,000 tourists visited the Giant's Causeway in Antrim. It is not our job to try to displace the tourist attraction at the Giant's Causeway; we would not succeed. However, we have an opportunity to help those tourists continue their journey. Why not consider a joined-up single all-island marketing strategy that will enable 400,000 people not necessarily to cross the Border into Donegal, but to continue their journey? The Minister has the skills for this joined up thinking. She has proved herself at other Departments and I look to her to show some initiative in the three areas I raised.

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