Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Since being elected, the new Administration has put the focus on its ambition to create jobs and, in particular, to develop the tourism sector in order to create jobs and generate revenue for the State. In spite of my deep differences with the Government on its economic policy and decision to adhere to what is the disastrous EU-IMF bank bailout and austerity programme, I share its belief that tourism represents an area which has great potential to create the jobs that we so badly need for the people and vital revenue for the State. In this context, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the opportunities to develop tourism and tourism related employment. I also welcome the fact that the Bill indicates a recognition that the Government has to act proactively to develop the tourism sector and increase the capital investment in developing tourism infrastructure.

Given that we are debating this important issue, we should ask what else could be done to develop the tourism sector and create tourism related jobs. We need to do a hell of a lot more and urgently. The simple fact is that in line with the disastrous economic plight of the country, the tourism sector has been hit significantly in the last few years. Many tourism related jobs have either gone or are under significant threat. As a first step, we must take measures and make investments to secure existing tourism related jobs and create new ones in a sector that we know has massive potential.

I would like to be localist and talk about my constituency of Dún Laoghaire. I want to do this not because I am just concerned about my constituency, but also because Dún Laoghaire is a port and still one of the main entry points for tourists to this country. It is a seaside town which has a particularly rich history, as well as a rich cultural, literary and architectural heritage. Located between Dublin, our major tourism hub, and County Wicklow, one of our most spectacular scenic landscapes, it has major tourism potential and many uniquely attractive features. The town is a microcosm not only of the country's potential to develop tourism and employment but also of the obstacles to achieving these objectives and, in many areas, the failure to fully realise that potential for many years. Dún Laoghaire has many attractive features. People from all over Dublin and beyond used to visit the town to enjoy its vistas and harbour which, by any definition, is a fantastic heritage site and architectural feature. When it was first built, the harbour was the largest man-made harbour in the world and even now could challenge for designation as a world heritage site. Dún Laoghaire's seaside vistas remain highly attractive and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of domestic and foreign tourists and visitors enjoy its walks, including those into beautiful heritage towns such as Dalkey and beyond to Killiney Hill, another beautiful feature of the area. The town reaches into the Dublin Mountains and has some beautiful forests and parks which have tremendous potential at many levels. As I stated, it also has a rich literary history and associations with writers going back to Joyce, Beckett and Shaw and, in later times, Maeve Binchy, the recently deceased Hugh Leonard and others. I do not need to elaborate on this aspect of the town's heritage.

The potential of Dún Laoghaire has been grossly mismanaged during the years by the Government, local authorities and State agencies, in particular, the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company, a semi-State company which comes under the aegis of the Department of Transport. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government also played a role in this regard to the extent that developments around the seafront and harbour usually take place in close collaboration with the local authority and the Department has an influence on getting this right.

The major problems facing the town which are, as I stated, symptomatic of those one sees elsewhere are evident in a number of areas. I will, first, address the town's position as a key route into the country for passengers. Stena Line is trying to get rid of its remaining permanent staff in Dún Laoghaire. It first reduced its twice daily ferry service from the harbour to one sailing and in recent weeks announced it will reduce its year-round service to a seasonal service which will only run for six months of the year. Consequently, the company's remaining permanent employees were informed in the past week or two that their jobs were to go. While the job losses remain subject to negotiation, management has thrown down the gauntlet. This development is a disaster for the town and will have a knock-on effect on the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company and its staff. As the ferry service has been run down, major pressure has been applied to the workforce in the harbour. For example, there have been five compulsory redundancies of harbour policemen and the company is seeking further redundancies, pay cuts and so forth. Workers in the company believe their jobs are under serious threat.

These developments are of major significance in several respects. First, the workers in question want to keep their jobs and do not want to be thrown on the dole. They will also have a significance, however, in terms of the harbour as an amenity and maintaining it as a working harbour and key route into the country and everything that goes with that role. The reduction in the number of harbour policemen diminishes the harbour as a public amenity. In recent years harbour policemen have saved a number of lives. Sadly, one of the less positive features of Dún Laoghaire Harbour is that occasionally people seeking to take their own lives have attempted to drive over or jump off its piers. On a number of occasions harbour policemen who were present acted quickly and conscientiously by jumping into the sea to save lives. More generally, they provide security for the thousands of walkers who traverse the harbour daily. When harbour policemen jobs are lost, the workers who want to work go on social welfare, creating costs for the State, and the harbour as an amenity is diminished.

If one goes back a little further, people who did simple things such as supervise the public toilets in the harbour also lost their jobs. All of the harbour's public toilets have been shut down. It is a major sore point for users of the pier, particularly those with children, that they do not have access to such a basic amenity as a public toilet. It is not available because the harbour company places great emphasis on cost-cutting at the expense of public amenities. One hears visitors say they will not walk the length of the pier because toilet facilities are not available or they will not return to the town because of the lack of litter bins on the seafront.

One plank of the Government's tourism development strategy is to drive down costs for tourists. It must be careful that by its actions we do not cut off our nose to spite our face. It would be a major mistake to cut the jobs and services provided by front-line tourism and amenity workers, including those employed in physically bringing visitors to the country, namely, Stena Line workers. To do so would diminish the tourism attractiveness and capacity of Dún Laoghaire which should be a jewel in the crown of Irish tourism. As a key entry point to the State, we should invest in and develop the town and secure jobs and services in the harbour. We appear, however, to be moving in the opposite direction.

Stena Line is engaging in an alarming Irish Ferries-type manoeuvre. Deputies will recall the famous Irish Ferries incident to which I refer. Stena Line, possibly in collusion with the harbour company, appears to be deliberately running down the ferry routes into Dún Laoghaire to put pressure on the workforce. By moving its service to Dublin Port, it intends to get rid of its workforce and, essentially, casualise it. It will then bring back in poorly paid workers and rebuild the route further down the road, with the loss of vital community jobs and many people ending up on social welfare. If a company replaces loyal workers who have been there for years in well paid jobs, it affects the money that is spent in the town and creates a workforce that is casualised and has less loyalty to the amenity and to the job they are doing, which does not help to make the place more attractive; it makes it worse. I appeal to the Government, even at that level, to say that Dún Laoghaire Port should remain, as it always has been, a key route into this country. It should put pressure on Stena to maintain its routes into Dún Laoghaire and on the harbour company not to run down the vital front-line workforce that makes Dún Laoghaire Harbour and port and the surrounding amenity what it is.

That is one side of the equation. The other side consists of stuff we really see too much of. The authorities presiding over this, while imposing cuts on front-line workers in the harbour, do not seem to be imposing the same cuts on themselves. They seem to be wasting money on themselves, on consultants and on frankly ridiculous plans that contribute nothing to developing the harbour and seafront in a way that would enhance Dún Laoghaire town as a tourist attraction. Currently, Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company is losing approximately €10,000 per week. The Deputies will have to check these figures, but this is what I understand. How much is it spending on consultants? Approximately €10,000 per week - a figure that has gone up significantly over recent years. In 2007, consultancy fees were €296,000 per year. I have an estimate for the amount spent in 2009 on consultancy fees, revenue development funds, service management fees, exceptional costs and so on - which will need to be verified because it is difficult these days to get accurate figures from the harbour company which talks about things like commercial sensitivity - of €480,000. At the same time, the company is slashing the jobs of the people who do the work in the port. I might add that the CEO of the harbour company is, in my opinion - although I cannot get accurate figures for this either - very well paid indeed, probably earning between €130,000 and €160,000 per year.

Here is another interesting fact. One of the board members of Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company is a man called Mr. Gerry Nagle. Like all the board directors, he receives fees, which currently run at about €13,000 per year, for going to eight board meetings per year. In the last couple of years, however, Mr. Nagle has moved to Dubai. As a result, he has to be flown by the harbour board from Dubai to Ireland eight times a year, with his flights and overnight expenses paid for, to attend these meetings. This is extraordinary, particularly given the serious trouble the harbour company is in. I believe he is a former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. What the hell are we doing using public money to pay for flights from Dubai for a guy who attends meetings eight times a year when, at the same time, harbour workers, who provide the real services and contribute to the amenity value of Dún Laoghaire Harbour, are having their wages slashed? At the moment the company is seeking pay cuts of between 20% and 40% from the workforce. These are workers who have already been hit with the universal social charge and have, as a result, lost about €200 per month from their earnings. Now the company wants more, while consultants are being paid fortunes and board members are being flown in from Dubai. It is frankly outrageous. I appeal to the Government to take a serious look at this.

What these consultants seem to be paid to do is to come up with plans and visions. We have had a lot of plans and visions for Dún Laoghaire over the last few years, and I find them interesting. They are all very expensive, and most of them come to nothing. We have had plans and visions aplenty, for example, for the site of Dún Laoghaire Baths, which sits right beside Dún Laoghaire Harbour and has been derelict for the last 20 years. The baths used to be a major tourist attraction and people from all over Dublin used to come and swim there. The local community used to think of it as the best babysitter that Dún Laoghaire ever had - a place to bring one's children. It has sat there derelict for 20 years, but we have paid consultants a lot of money to come up with crazy plans for high-rise apartment blocks and so on. At one stage, there was a proposal for a 19-storey office block on the site of the sea front. Local residents resisted this fiercely with huge demonstrations and, thankfully, prevented it. In doing so, they did not just protect a vital sea-front amenity but, in the context of NAMA and the number of empty developments all over the country, probably saved the taxpayer in the region of half a billion euro.

This was followed by a proposal for a ten-storey apartment block on the Carlisle Pier. For people who do not know what the Carlisle Pier is, it is the site of the greatest emigration from this country by the Irish diaspora, the place where King George V arrived in Ireland in 1911 and where James Connolly organised a protest against this visit. Whatever side one takes politically, that is a historic moment that still has not been commemorated. The diaspora, one of the most important features of Irish history, and all the things that went on at that vital entry and exit point are not commemorated. Plans were drawn up, if one can believe it, to put a ten-storey apartment block on the pier, but they were resisted and defeated by the people. However, even now, after all the madness and chaos of the property bubble, the harbour company has come up with a new plan which includes putting 300 apartments in Dún Laoghaire Harbour. Are these people insane? We do not need any more apartments anywhere - certainly not in Dún Laoghaire nor arguably anywhere in the country. The people who have come up with this madness are being paid with public money. I am glad to say that as a result of public pressure a diaspora museum has been included in the plan. The Government should tell the harbour company we will have the diaspora museum but we do not need the 300 apartments. For God's sake, we will ruin the harbour as a public amenity.

Here is something else to do with the local authority. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has agreed a capital budget with its major item of expenditure being €35 million for a plan to put a new library administrative headquarters in a beautiful green area just beside Dún Laoghaire Harbour called Moran Park. It contains a bowling green and the harbourmaster's lodge, which is a protected building and is connected to the harbour and its historical heritage. There is a reservoir at the back which is now badly run down but used to pump water into ships, including mailboats, that docked at Carlisle Pier. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council wants to spend €35 million putting a big symmetrical library administrative headquarters on this site. At the same time, Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company has an empty building of six or seven storeys beside Dún Laoghaire County Council. Part of the library service is already situated in the top floor of that building in Harbour Court, which is known as Building No. 2. The rest of the building, which is in public ownership, is empty and it would cost nothing to install a library administrative headquarters there. We would not then have to spend €35 million to construct a building no one asked for, on a site of historical and heritage importance and one of the last remaining green areas on the seafront in Dún Laoghaire. If we were to do that we would have €35 million to spend on something else, for example, on what people have repeatedly asked for, namely, that Dún Laoghaire Baths be restored as a public swimming amenity. That would cost a fraction of €35 million, perhaps €10 million. It would fit in with the heritage element and is precisely the sort of item that attracts people to Dún Laoghaire. It would be an enormous boost to the town at a cost of €10 million.

We could invest the rest of the €35 million in the diaspora museum people have asked to be situated on the Carlisle Pier. There have even been suggestions of a planetarium and a maritime institute or museum in Dún Laoghaire Harbour. Would that not be a good idea and make for a tourist attraction? We do not have a planetarium in this country and it would link in with the maritime history and heritage of the area. I used to go to the planetarium in London and absolutely loved it. There used to be a small one in Schull which, sadly, has gone. Would a planetarium in Dún Laoghaire not be a good idea? It would create jobs, bring tourism and be an attraction we could sell on the international stage rather than have 300 apartments, or a library administrative building which is not needed because there are already many empty buildings nearby in public ownership. I simply do not understand this and I appeal to the Minister of State on this point. The proposal of the Minister, Deputy Deenihan, to take the Bank of Ireland site in College Green from the bank and develop it as a heritage site is a brilliant idea. Can we not apply that sort of imaginative thinking to places such as Dún Laoghaire and repeat it elsewhere?

I am not qualified to speak about fishing, but anyone connected with fishing ports around the country would say that the diminution of our fishing industry is a blow not only to the people who work in the industry but also hits at the unique character and heritage of this country. That is what attracts people to come here. They do not come for the weather but rather because of our history, heritage and landscape, the sense of community and so on. Such communities are destroyed when small fishing industries, working harbours and places such as Dún Laoghaire Baths are closed and replaced with bloody apartment blocks or buildings no one asked for. That is the sort of imaginative thinking we need.

The Acting Chairman might tell me how much time I have remaining.

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