Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I again thank Deputy Timmins for raising this issue. He mentioned signage and the variety of projects that exist. The one thing that is needed is signage. Surveys show that when people come to this country they want to see a new product and new things happening. Ireland’s Ancient East initiative will work but it will take time to develop it. It was the same with the Wild Atlantic Way; people felt initially that it would not work but now everybody is buying into it and they see the benefits.

Deputy Timmins inquired about overseas marketing. This year we invested an extra €1 million in order to attract people to Ireland’s Ancient East and the Wild Atlantic Way and to try to get them into the regions. We work with the airports and the ferry companies to try to encourage people to come to this country and to go to rural Ireland. That is the whole point; to try to get them to see what we have.

Last year more than €35 million was spent by the Government on the promotion of this country abroad. Another €1 million was spent in regional and co-operative marketing and that was matched by funding from some local authorities to support the initiatives and to try to get people to come to this country. They also worked with the airlines. The travel tax has been a benefit. The Government reduced the travel tax from 3% to zero and the VAT rate was reduced from 13.5% to 9%.

Deputy Timmins adverted to the situation and it is important to spell it out. We are a small country and this year we had approximately 7.5 million visitors, a 13% increase, for the first ten months of this year. We hope we can reach 8 million. The plan for the next couple of years is to increase the number to 10 million. The 7.5 million visitors have generated revenue of €3.75 billion into the country and we want to increase that to €5 billion. A total of 205,000 are employed in tourism and we want to increase the number to 250,000 by 2010. Jobs can be created in the area but we must attract people into the country. I urge all the tourism bodies in Ireland’s Ancient East to buy into the initiative, sell it and work with it. To be fair to the Government and Fáilte Ireland, we allocated the funding last week and it has spread into the region in order to get the facilities in place so that people will visit and will stay longer. They are a different segment of the market. The Wild Atlantic Way is one proposition. Ireland’s Ancient East is another proposition and Dublin is another market.

We are trying to bring people to every corner of the country and we have had great success. I compliment Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and everybody involved in the trade, in particular the trade itself. Sometimes we forget that many people make major investments in tourism with their own money and take major risks. They should be rewarded, helped and supported because they create badly wanted jobs. Because they are Irish jobs created by Irish people sometimes we do not have the same respect as if they were multinational companies.

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