Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill and thank the Minister for the work he has done to date on this issue. I recognise the Bill, as the Minister said, is technical in nature and is removing a cap. There is no change in terms of the policy platform of the Government. I have been supportive of the actions and initiatives the Minister has taken since coming into office and will continue to be so if they are in the best interests of the tourism sector and the country.

We all know there are a couple of bedrocks in the economy which we perhaps lost sight of in better times. One is agriculture, with which the Minister is very familiar because of his constituency, and the other is tourism. There is a lot of talk about foreign direct investment and the need to attract it, in terms of high technology companies, ICT, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and other industries. We often fail to recognise that one of the best aspects of foreign direct investment can be derived from the tourism sector. It is effectively money from America and can be of immense benefit to reignite our domestic economy.

We are all aware of the lack of confidence in our economy and the impact it is having at local level. It is often very difficult to stimulate the industry from macroeconomic policy decisions that are taken, but if activity can be ignited in the service industry, in hotels, bars and restaurants, a buoyant economy will be created in every local community. Tourism has a phenomenal capacity to deliver on that.

I welcome the initiative, which will allow the State to facilitate Fáilte Ireland in providing assistance through its current programme and the facilities it has identified and approved but are awaiting funding. I wish the Minister well in his endeavours with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Finance in attempting to ensure that a greater level of funding is set aside to support this vital industry.

The Minister is well aware of the number of jobs the sector provides. They are exceptionally important jobs. Some of them, by nature, are part time and assist young people in college and young mothers with families who need to work part time. The impact it has on our economy is often underestimated. I support the Minister in his efforts to ensure a greater level of funding is set aside this year and over the next number of years. Such funding has to be viewed in the context of rebuilding our economy.

We share a common view, with the exception of the Minister's colleague, on the necessity to recapitalise the banks to create a level of activity in the domestic economy. In parallel with that, funding for the tourism sector will have an equal benefit in terms of motivating and renewing activity. The Bill will allow the Minister to provide funding to Fáilte Ireland. He will have to win the argument with the Department of Finance.

We should develop a new programme. Long before the crash I prepared some ideas for a former Minister on investing significant sums of money in tourism capital infrastructure. We should be spending in the region of €1 billion a year over five years to create best of breed facilities and attractions in four unique districts in the country. There could be a level of competition between regions in terms of who would have the best facilities for families, watersports or outdoor pursuits such as walking or hiking. We could create some of the best facilities in Europe.

Sadly, that is not possible in the current environment. For far too long we have failed to consider new markets. There are no facilities, with the exception of good hotels. We have not created major attractions like other countries for families and young people. Why does everybody have to head to France, Portugal, Spain or Italy? There is a weather issue. A level of development has taken place in recent years in some of the Nordic countries which now have very good tourism facilities. Why can we not forget about the weather, look at what attractions are available and try to create the best possible ones to attract inward investment to benefit the State?

There is a huge job to be done to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit within the tourism sector to develop ideas. It will then be up to all of us to try to find how to support it with grant aid. The figures will stack up if we can develop the entrepreneurial spirit we had in the days of Shannon Development. Dr. Brendan O'Regan was very proactive in developing the castle experience and Bunratty folk park. Other facilities have been successful such as St. John's Castle in Limerick. Many such attractions targeted the American market. A visit to a castle was a big thing in the United States at one stage but not any longer. We have to look beyond such attractions.

I am mindful of the fact Shannon Development continued to pursue the next level of tourism attractions. It has an attractive offering, of which the Minister may be aware. There is a proposal to build a theme park at the back of the folk park. Such projects should be considered for grant aid. It wants to attract an international player, similar to the management of other theme parks. As we do not have much experience in that, it is right to seek to tie up with other international operators to bring the best of breed theme park to this country, in the first instance to retain our own people. A significant number of Irish people travel abroad every year to facilitate families because the facilities are not here and it is not just the weather. We need to carefully consider that.

We also need to consider how we promote and market what we have which requires money. In the past I have been critical of the efforts of Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland to promote Ireland. When one moves out into the wider world in terms of attracting tourism it becomes exceptionally expensive and it is not possible for Ireland to fund the kind of marketing campaign that would give the growth rates we would want. We need to be considerably more effective in targeting certain sectors of the market.

I am delighted the certificate of Irish heritage has eventually come to fruition. I know it has been doing the rounds for some time and has been working through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It culminated this week with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade presenting the first certificate. I understand that later this month or early next month those certificates will be available. I believe Mr. Greg O'Neill from County Clare first proposed that idea. I know some people have suggested it came from the Farmleigh forum, but Mr. O'Neill, who was originally from Athlone and a schoolmate of the late Brian Lenihan Sn., would rightly recognise that it was his idea going back over 20 years. It is an exceptionally good idea in terms of making that connection.

We will need to consider other similar opportunities, including how we get into the many networks that exist. For example, there are walking clubs to which local authorities have given support and grants and which have benefited from the good work of FÁS and Fáilte Ireland. There are many walking networks throughout Europe and in other parts of the world and it is a matter of being proactive in making contact with them, doing the legwork and setting up festivals with a theme at this end affording people the opportunity to travel.

In my area as in the Minister of State's area there is a very strong history of traditional music. We have traditional music festivals throughout the summer which are very good for the region, and are well recognised and supported. I was delighted that an east Clare tourism group has decided to have a walking festival next month, which extends the tourism season. It has been building connections with other walking groups in Ireland and the idea is to look further afield. It is slow and expensive because most of the work is done by volunteers in the first instance or the very small tourism practitioners in the region, mainly bed and breakfast operators, and taxi and hackney service providers. It is a small group of local people coming together. A small amount of money to assist them in their marketing efforts to offer their wares to a broader audience would be most welcome. We need to consider the macro level in terms of branding Ireland, but we also need to assist at the micro level.

The Minister of State will be familiar with the fishing on Lough Derg. Some people spend time, energy and money travelling to places like Holland and France to attract people to come to participate in lake angling. It is an exceptionally good tourist offering and probably one which has been underexploited. Great work has been done by many of the local fishing clubs in their restocking programmes and returning the catch. There needs to be joined-up thinking with the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and Inland Fisheries Ireland to eliminate poaching which has become a serious phenomenon in more recent years. There was always some poaching of salmon. While I do not want to get into the broader debate of who is doing it, there is a strong body of evidence that certain nationalities in particular have targeted lakes and are effectively removing many of the fish. We need to consider a programme that limits the number of fish caught in a particular way in order to protect that asset. If the information gets back to the fishing community that the rivers and lakes are no longer fruitful in terms of delivery of catch, it finds its way into the angling magazines resulting in a complete fall-off in activity. There is some work to be done in that area.

The Minister of State has given numbers indicating the increase in tourism, which is helpful. We cannot sit back on our laurels, particularly with the economic crisis that continues to prevail across Europe. There was growth in a number of European countries, but the forecast was not great, which means people will not be travelling. We will need to watch developments in the key markets from where people are still in a position to travel. Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland need to be flexible in recognising the state of other countries' economies.

I do not want to play down the increase in tourist numbers, about which we are all happy. Some of the increase was as a result of not having an ash cloud this year as we did last year which impacted many businesses and resulted in a bad year.

I was not a big fan of the VAT reduction. When the full analysis is done in due course, I am not sure it will have shown the level of benefits we would like for the cost it has had on the pension sector. There are some suggestions it has not been passed on and even when it is passed on, one would need to eat out many times to save enough to buy a meal based on the VAT reduction, but we have had that debate before.

Since his appointment, the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, has strongly indicated his intention to work much more closely with the State airports in an effort to have aviation policy and tourism policy work together in a more coherent way, which I always believed was the right approach. He has considerable work to do regarding Cork and Shannon Airports. While I am not suggesting it is coming from the Department, some of the information coming through the media about Shannon Airport in particular is of concern. Some members of the airport's board seem to suggest the solution is the development of a long lease and ultimately the privatisation of the airport through the backdoor, which would not be helpful. All of the State airports need to be considered together in a collective way. If any of the critical assets are simply considered in a profit and loss environment and focused exclusively on being a profit centre, the region or country is robbed of that facility in terms of being able to pull together the lot and develop a coherent policy.

We need to get away from the notion of the privatisation of things like airports and considering them only in terms of profit and loss. Nobody ever considers a road in terms of profit and loss; it is critical infrastructure for moving people from A to B and the same is true of our train services. We need to start to view our airports in the same way. Some local people seem to believe that if the airport was privatised and taken into local hands, they could run it much better. However, that moves such airports out of the central picture. We need a central authority running our three main airports, similar to what existed previously. I never agreed with the State Airports Act 2004 giving rise to the notion of airports being somehow in competition with each other. We do not adopt that approach to roads and suggest that as someone could reach a destination quicker on the N7 than on the N8, the road should be privatised to force them to take off a few bends allowing a driver to get there quicker, which would be daft. We need to get back to managing the assets in a way that gives everybody a fair share of the incoming tourists, but it must be done with proper regulation and governance, in a manner that utilises the facilities to meet the policies that are set.

Over the years we have talked at length about balanced regional development but have done little to support it other than throw in the planks of infrastructure by building the roads - the airports are there. There needs to be a management policy sitting over those assets to manage them in a coherent way that states that Shannon Airport will be for North American tourism, that we will brand that and that will be the product offered there, while doing something else with Dublin and Cork Airports. We must also examine other potential facilities around that including the pre-clearance of cargo, which while not related to tourism is an important aspect. As the Minister of State will be aware, the pre-clearance for passengers travelling to the United States has been successful; probably this asset has not been sweated as much as it should have been as this stage but it is an important feature of assisting airlines in identifying other opportunities in the United States. Hot on the heels of that, we must continue our efforts to develop pre-clearance for cargo. That would create a level of activity in Shannon Airport or Cork Airport, if it ever got to that level, and would have the capacity to underwrite a significant cost base at an airport that would make it more attractive for, say, Shannon Airport to be able to offer better deals to airlines that would generate passengers. That in itself would have a snowball effect because much of the cargo now travels in the hold of commercial aircraft. There is a good deal of work to be done in the Department in marrying the tourism component and the transport component through the aviation side and, additionally, examining with Enterprise Ireland the importance of bringing in the cargo component while it helps to support the activity thereafter.

I mentioned briefly the importance of supporting the micro activity in the tourism sector, particularly for tourists engaged in outdoor pursuits, be it walking, surfing or fishing. Surfing has become a very significant product on the western seaboard, particularly in Clare, with which I am most familiar, but it extends to the Minister of State's county of Mayo and further afield.

I ask the Minister of State to use his office to ensure the tourism element of our future development is pulled together in a strong way with the transport initiative to ensure there is a coherent approach not only to the development of the product but a sustained marketing effort. I will not do what others did in the past and say we should spend, spend, spend. We must be careful about what we spend because we will not get the money from the Department of Finance in the first instance. More work can be done in identifying the tourism areas and opportunities. It is not all about having an advertisement on the front page of the New York Post but we could be on the front page of it with a story that is unique, different and has the capacity to attract interest rather than with a flat advertisement that is paid for by the Irish Exchequer at a phenomenal cost.

I know that some work is being done by the State agencies. I recognise the work of Tourism Ireland, Fáilte Ireland, Shannon Development and a myriad of other agencies involved in tourism activity. They often get bashed, usually by the Opposition side of the House. I will not engage in that because I know the difficulties and constraints under which they work. I wish the Minister and them well in their efforts ahead.

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