Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for bringing the Bill before the House. Fianna Fáil will be supporting the Bill, which is technical in nature. Its purpose is to enable the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to advance a higher aggregate budget allocation to the National Tourism Development Authority, Fáilte Ireland, for the purpose of supporting enterprises and projects relating to the development of tourist traffic and also tourist facilities and services from €150 million to €300 million. I have sought this in the past and it makes eminent sense. We support the increase in the advance budget cap for the authority and will support the passage of this Bill.

Ireland's tourism industry has seen its visitor numbers grow consistently in recent years. Overseas visitors spent an estimated €1.535 billion in the State in the first half of 2014. Revenue from overseas visitors grew by nearly 9% between January and June of this year, which is an additional €123 million compared with the same six-month period in 2013.

We are always concerned about visitors' length of stay. I understand visitors have been staying longer in recent times. The number of nights spent in Ireland by overseas travellers increased by 13.4% in the second quarter of last year compared with that period in 2013. Much of this is testament to the fact that throughout Europe, people are moving out of a recessionary environment and the concept of controlling their spending to a great degree. We are well poised to benefit from that. During harsher times and times of austerity, even people who have money are much more controlled in how they spend and they limit their holidays to an absolute minimum. That has reduced the number of nights people stay.

Fianna Fáil in government launched A Strategy and Action Plan for Irish Trade, Tourism and Investment to 2015, many of the proposals of which have resulted in the upswing in tourist numbers in recent years. We are pleased that the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, has worked on that strategy document and added to it as he saw appropriate. We have largely taken a bipartisan approach to this aspect of our economic development.

In order to remain competitive in the global tourism market, Ireland must ensure that the quality of our services remain high, that prices remain reasonable and that access to our ports and airports increases. The savings created by the retention of the 9% VAT rate for the tourism sector must be passed on to the consumer. Obviously, with an upswing in certain sectors of the economy, the people in that sector must be mindful of the burden placed on a particular sector to provide that 9% VAT rate.

At the time of its introduction, I disagreed with it being taken from the pots of private pension holders, putting many of those pension funds in a perilous state. Many people are only now realising that measure will reduce their pension delivery in perpetuity. Even though the money was only taken for a three-year period, it was taken from the capital base of those pension funds and will impact on the pay out from those funds for the lifetime of those receiving them. It is vital that the industry is cognisant of the burden placed on those people and that it continues to pass on the savings from that reduced rate.

While the tourism experience offered in Ireland is unrivalled, we cannot rest on our laurels. Since The Gathering, the Government has neglected tourism product development and domestic and overseas marketing. I do not say that ignoring the context in which the Government had to manage its budget. As the economy is starting to recover, the focus must be on the development of the product. As sure as night follows day, tourists will not come back for the same experience, save in very rare circumstances. They want to see enhancements, new developments and new opportunities. Even those who have the greatest connection to this country expect to see the experience enhanced and evolve with modern thinking and generational expectations.

This is reflected in a 17.5% reduction in funding since 2012. While recent trends in tourism are encouraging, there is a risk that a proportion of the increases in visitor numbers is due to the euro devaluation against the dollar and sterling. While we can all complement ourselves - I can do so in respect of the previous strategy that was developed and the Minister of State, his party and the Government can take credit for their input into that strategy - collectively, we must all be mindful of external factors such as the cost of oil, which provides cheaper access to the country by air and sea. Reduction in fuel prices at the pump encourages and increases domestic activity. From a broader perspective the differential between euro and sterling and the dollar certainly makes Ireland attractive as a destination in addition to what we have to offer. We must be cognisant of that in coming years.

We cannot afford to neglect the overall quality of the tourism offering in the country. The Government has a key role in supporting tourism product development, regional balance and domestic and overseas marketing. I am minded of a product development fund of approximately €50 million that existed in the past. Even though it was done under the Administration I was part of, at the time I felt the money was spread too thinly - trying to have something for everybody, which is a frequent tendency for any Government.

In the future, we need to look to the big bang approach. We need to be very careful in the spending of such money. It should not be seen like the sports capital programme, which is important in terms of putting money into every community. I might have differed with the Minister of State on the exact way some of the moneys were spent.

It was based on per head of population and the Department used a pro rataalgorithm to disperse funding. We cannot take the same approach to a product development fund from a tourism perspective. We have to look at the country as a whole and the major attractions that would increase the tourism influx to a greater extent if we had these signature offerings. If the Minister of State occupies the same portfolio after the general election, I hope he will give cognisance to major signature attractions that would benefit the entire country. Then with the smaller tourism opportunities we can target people when they are here. Nationally, we have to portray ourselves to an international market that is looking at the major attractions. Further innovative projects such as the Wild Atlantic Way are required, with the goal of increasing tourism numbers overall and, more especially, promoting a more even distribution of tourists across regions. Undertaking targeted initiatives to promote a more balanced regional distribution of visitors is a key plank of Fianna Fáil’s tourism policy.

The figures for overseas tourists are strong, with an 11% increase in 2015 compared to 2014. Those of us involved in politics should not be taking all of the credit. We must recognise the staff of Fáilte Ireland and the fantastic work they do. It is comparable to the work done by IDA Ireland in attracting foreign direct investment. Fáilte Ireland does an excellent job in marketing and targeting particular sectors overseas. At over 8 million, the number of overall trips to Ireland was up 14% in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. The number of visits from mainland Europe grew by 15.9% in the period January to November 2015 to 2,850,000. North America registered an increase of 14.2% in the same period, with almost 1.5 million visits. The number of visits from Great Britain was up by 12.5% to over 3,250,000. We had a difficulty for several years in working the UK market. Some of this was due to the fact that parts of the United Kingdom were suffering the same economic circumstances as we were. The differences between the sterling and euro exchange rates have been helpful in rectifying this. However, we need to build on it. The number of visits from the rest of the world, mostly from long-haul and developing markets, totalled just short of 500,000 for the first 11 months of 2015, which represented an increase of 13%. There is a considerable amount of latent capacity in the Middle East and Asian markets. It is an area we have failed to capture and not mastered, as well as our neighbours in the United Kingdom. There are issues around visas and access, but we should not exclude it from our sights. I know that it is a costly market to target, but our ex-pat community could be energised more in spreading the word and encouraging activity from these regions.

The figures should primarily be seen as a vote of confidence in the quality, attractiveness and novelty on offer from the Irish tourism, hospitality and food sectors. Without doubt, the 9% VAT rate has helped to keep costs more manageable in the sector in the past few years. However, I have heard many outlandish claims by Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies that the special 9% VAT rate is the sole reason for the surge in the tourism industry this year. It is a contributory factor for sure, but it is not the sole reason.

While the 2015 numbers are remarkable, without a well placed strategic vision for tourism development and promotion, there are significant risks to future growth in the sector. It is a constantly evolving market and we need a Government that understands the role of tourism policy. Rather than smugly trumpeting short-term gains in tourism figures, the Government needs to put in place a strategy for developing new products and capturing new markets. Current tourism policy strategy is not well placed to develop new tourism products and respond to changing tourism patterns. After all, there are significant risks to achieving the 2025 target of attracting 10 million overseas visitors. Fáilte Ireland’s chief executive, Mr. Michael Cawley, recently highlighted the risks when warning of a possible downturn in tourism figures due to capacity issues, potential price gouging and a lack of regional balance. Record numbers of visitors in 2015 were due to a low VAT rate and the strength of the dollar and the pound. According to the Mr. Cawley, the 11% growth in visitor numbers last year was "fuelled largely by factors external to the tourism industry," including the weak euro, in particular. This, he said, "masked an underlying cost creep" in the tourism sector, something we need to address. His background is well recognised and his capacity for cost containment in growing markets, particularly given his experience in the aviation sector, is legendary. When someone like him expresses these concerns, it is not done on the basis of something he has read but is innate to his DNA.

We need a more ambitious tourism policy. The recently announced national tourism policy, People, Place and Policy: Growing Tourism to 2025, is lacking in ambition. The Government aims to increase the number of overseas visitors to 10 million per annum by 2025. However, it should be more ambitious, given the wider outlook for tourism in Europe. With additional resources, we believe Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland could be well placed to meet these targets by 2020. The long-term sustainable growth of Irish tourism is being put at risk by a lack of adequate funding for tourism marketing and development. I hope increasing the borrowing limits may provide the agencies with greater capacity in this regard. Since 2012 annual Government funding for Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland has been cut by 17%, or €25 million, to €119 million, resulting in significantly constrained budgets for tourism marketing and development. With the economic upturn, more revenue is available and it is important that we fight for a fair share of the funding at the Cabinet to develop this important sector of the economy. This has come at a time when tourism has shown itself to be an excellent investment, contributing over €6.45 billion to the economy annually and employing 205,000 people. Every euro spent on tourism marketing and development by the State supports €54 in tourism revenue in the economy, an excellent return on investment by any standard.

Tourism is a changing market and we need to develop new products to reflect this. The current tourism policy strategy is not as well placed to develop new tourism products and respond to changing tourism patterns. We especially need to spend on research and marketing budgets to tap into new markets. The Asia-Pacific region will be one of the fastest growing outbound tourism markets in the next 15 years, expanding by 6.5% a year. Visitors from this region are particularly attractive for Ireland. On average, they stay twice as long, spend and travel more within the country than visitors from nearer markets. However, we do not know nearly enough about tourism patterns to tap into new markets to take advantage of emerging trends. As Mr. Michael Vaughan, former president of the Irish Hotels Federation and a fellow Clare man, said:

We know more about the travel patterns of the 6.8 million cows on the island than we do about the 6.5 million visitors to our shores each year. It is shocking how little we know about tourism.

He is right about that. This is expensive. The infrastructure and architecture that was put in place to track our livestock was built up over years with a good deal of investment. We need considerable investment not only in our analytics but in our data capture and in our approach to capturing that information. It would be money well spent and provide a valuable resource to the marketing gurus within the various State agencies and those in the private sector who act also as ambassadors for this State.

While Fáilte Ireland has set aside €5 million specifically to promote conference tourism, it is unfortunate that we have a major catch up to play in this area with the loss of the Web Summit next year. I am on record on this and the Minister of State and I have largely agreed on the impact its loss will have on our reputation internationally and it is difficult to know what impact its ultimate loss will have on tourism to the capital and the rest of the country next year. However, it is unlikely that Fáilte Ireland even with this new budget will be able to make up for the loss of such a prestigious, high profile event as the Web Summit. It has put Ireland centre stage for the past four years, bringing the chief executive officers of large multinationals as well as the small start-ups from the world's most innovative technology companies and has shown them the best that Ireland has to offer. It also represents a huge loss from the tourism point of view with an immediate loss of €100 million to the economy next year. It is unfortunate that more was not done to keep the Web Summit in its home and that the Government, and more specifically the Taoiseach, could not step up to the mark and secure its future for Ireland.

I do not want to get into the politics of it and we have talked about it in the past. It is a significant loss from a reputational point of view and it shows to some extent a lack of flexibility, notwithstanding perhaps the difficult demands that were made at the time. As the Minister of State will be aware, requests were made several times to have four specific issues addressed to secure the long-term future of the summit in Dublin. These included traffic management, public transport, hotels and Wi-Fi, all which were raised constantly during the last four years with the Government. None of these requests should have proved insurmountable. The Government has failed Ireland with the loss of this highly reputable global event. It has failed to secure future business in Dublin worth over €100 million annually. Ireland's loss is certainly Lisbon's gain. In the medium term I am sure the bed nights will be filled some other way. The prestige attached to the Web Summit had benefits that far outstripped the bed nights or the restaurant covers that are lost.

Another pressing challenge facing the industry is the need to attract more visitors to the regions. Unfortunately, recent growth in overseas visitors has not been spread evenly across the country and many rural tourism businesses continue to face tough trading conditions. Tourism is one of the world's fastest growing industries, and its potential for the Irish economy is very significant. As a labour-intensive sector, it has a strong role to play in employment creation across a range of skill levels in every part of the country. This is a major challenge given the vital social and economic role that tourism employment plays particularly in rural areas outside the main urban centres.

Developing further regional initiatives such as the Wild Atlantic Way in an effort to spread the increasing tourist numbers across the country are a key priority in the area of tourism for our party. A regional balance in tourism visitors makes sense from the point of view of promoting sustainable tourism as well as increasing the benefit to under-developed local economies from the sector. Initiatives designed to distribute tourism across regions will also ease congestion in particularly popular areas at peak season.

The development of our canals, walkways and forests as further tourist attractions should be a priority in this regard. The success of the greenway in the Minister of State's county of Mayo is a good example of innovative thinking resulting in increased tourist numbers in the regions. A significant amount of work has been done in developing a lighthouse on Loop Head in County Clare and it has created a nice attraction and has attracted quite a few visitors. Clare County Council also recently purchased an island, Inis Cealtra, on which there was once an ancient monastic settlement. The island is located on Lough Derg and the intention is to develop it as a tourism attraction. That will require money from the State. If I am fortunate enough to be re-elected to the next Parliament, I will push whoever is in government to secure appropriate funding to develop that attraction and the ancillary services that will be required. As it is an island, significant investment will be needed on the shoreside to put in place an interpretative centre for the island and to provide visitor access to it. Many of these types of initiatives grow from local interests, from small local groups getting together to identify potential. That needs to be very much part of the thinking around product development.

Internationally, the Ireland brand does not distinguish between North and South so our tourism strategy should also look to greater co-operation on tourism on both sides of the Border.

Another good example of an initiative to distribute tourism was the Wild Atlantic Way, a tourism trail on the west coast. The 2,500 km driving route passes through nine counties and three provinces, stretching from County Donegal's Inishowen Peninsula to Kinsale, County Cork, on the Celtic Sea coast. Along that route there are places and attractions previously little known to tourists, which have been designated as points of interest for travellers. The creation of the Wild Atlantic Way has increased tourist numbers along the route and has acted as a counterbalance to the pull of Dublin to tourists.

There is a need for the tourism agencies to identify, appraise and pursue new areas of potential in regions with low tourism numbers, which may have a particular competitive advantage, including food tourism, eco-tourism, film and television production, cruise tourism, the wider Irish diaspora, music, literature and the arts and the niche markets, for example, retired travellers, activity tourism and the health and wellness sector.

One of the Government's signature achievements in tourism marketing, The Gathering, was thought-out and developed in 2009. The Government has worked well with that strategy. If our party is successful in the election, I am sure we will continue to embrace and build on any of the work the Government has done with that strategy that was developed. That is in keeping with that bipartisan approach to tourism development in this State.

Similarly the comprehensive interdepartmental policy, A Strategy and Action Plan for Irish Trade, Tourism and Investment to 2015, was a blueprint of my party when it was in government and was published in September 2010. Many of the recommendations contained in this strategy were implemented by the Minister of State and I compliment him on that. Those include the excise tax reductions on short-haul flights to encourage visitors from price sensitive, established markets, particularly the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain; increasing return on investment in attractions by enhanced packaging, joint marketing and by making access easier through times, passes, tickets, transport, signage and websites; enhanced opportunities to market and compete for business tourism, including packages specifically promoted such as meetings, incentive travel, conferences and events, and trips that result from more generic promotion where the trip includes both leisure time and business time, an example being the development of the Conference Centre; and the promotion of cruise tourism which included gateways as well as some of the rural harbours and ports and some expansion of that especially in Dublin.

As a country, we have many challenges in continuing to make our cities, towns, villages and countryside some of the most attractive places in the world to visit. For the most part, it is the people who are working in the tourism and hospitality sector, as well as the people of Ireland, who will do the most work to meet this challenge. However, the Department, the tourism agencies and local authorities have a key role in devising tourism promotion strategies and policies. For all these bodies, we cannot get carried away with the success we have had in attracting tourists during the past number of years and we must not rest on our laurels.

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