Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy McLellan is quite correct. The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, and I attended a number of public meetings throughout the country, where we met all of the stakeholders. We covered much of the country and then we held a meeting in Dublin with all the State agencies.

I am confident about this report. We had Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and State agencies doing it, but this will be the first time there will be a policy from Government. We are currently going through the submissions and I thank and compliment all who made them. No doubt there is a great interest in tourism in this country. For example, thousands turned out in the middle of winter to support us in The Gathering and hundreds turned out for the meetings we held all over the country. Even last week, it was the same with the Wild Atlantic Way. Hundreds are turning up to meetings all over the country because they are interested in tourism and know that jobs can be created.

We set a target for The Gathering and achieved it. We brought communities and local authorities with us for The Gathering. People now realise, as does the Government, the importance of retaining the 9% VAT rate. That is why we put such funding into tourism. Last year alone we created 14,500 extra jobs in the tourism sector. It is all about bringing visitor numbers into the country, thus creating badly needed jobs. We will continue to do that. When we have this report we will publish it.

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