Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. The investment of an additional €150 million in the tourism sector is a very good story. However, I must ask who knows about it. We are inside in our little bubble but there is very little traction for this in the real world. I have my own view on how Fáilte Ireland does its job and it is not always positive. I have some experience of it over the years dating back to a time before I was a public representative when I was the head of the tourism body in Clonakilty district Chamber of Tourism. The experience of Fáilte Ireland is that it is overly bureaucratic, there is too much paperwork and too much use of language which puts challenges and difficulties in people’s way.

This country’s most unique selling point is our people. Visitors who come here love the scenery but what most of them talk about is the friendliness of the people. Tied in with that is our unique community spirit. The allocation of an additional €150 million to Fáilte Ireland is a missed opportunity. I would much prefer to see even a third of it - €50 million – going to communities. The Minister of State, Deputy Ring, oversaw one of the most successful ways of tapping into community spirt and getting a real return for money, namely, sports capital grants. Every community is involved and goodwill is engendered. Many good ideas come together and people work together to generate new sports initiatives. I would like to see a similar approach taken to tourism.

West Cork is the area I represent and it is heavily reliant on tourism revenue. There are many wonderful community groups with good ideas for generating tourism products but their hands are tied because there is no opportunity to get funding. Fáilte Ireland refers to iconic movements but it does not deliver to communities on the ground that want to grow products in order to attract people to their areas. We are all very proud of what we have to offer. We have wonderful scenery in west Cork, amazing heritage, history and geography but we want to sell it. I would love to see these funds being passed down to smaller communities to harness the enterprising spirit not just of people in west Cork but all over the country. However, that will not happen with Fáilte Ireland because in my experience it is too difficult to access funding for community groups.

In fairness to local authorities, they are very proactive but their funding stream is minimal. It is very difficult for people to access funding to develop a capital project to grow a tourism product.

In west Cork we are trying to develop the west Cork walkway which I envisage will one day rival the Camino in Spain. One will be able to get off an aeroplane at Cork Airport and walk all the way to the Mizen Peninsula. We will not build greenways or anything like them; rather we will provide signage and take some very low-key safety and practical measures to allow people to have a real and genuine experience in west Cork. There will be massive demand for such a product. I have been talking to Fáilte Ireland, but it is impossible to get any encouragement from it. It uses a lot of jargon and highfalutin language, but I get no concrete assistance from it. To be fair, I have asked the local authority to head up a local forum to include Cork Airport, the council and a number of other bodies in the area, to try to progress a west Cork walkway as an aspiration. The CEO, Mr. Tim Lucey, and his team have been extremely proactive and helpful in trying to develop the concept. It would be a real product and I use this occasion to commend everything that has been done.

I agree with all previous speakers on the great successes of the tourism industry. I was elected not only to continue in the current vein but also to question what we do, how we do it and whether we could do it better. Capital could be expended better and allocated better to communities. We could better tie in with the community entrepreneurial spirit to grow the product in local areas because there is a wonderful spirit of volunteering throughout Ireland. Unfortunately, as I have no faith that Fáilte Ireland will do this, I would like the Minister of State to examine the proposal and the possibility of introducing something like the sports capital grant in order that every community would be aware of the available moneys and be able to apply for them to develop a tourism product in order that Tourism Ireland could be even more proud to sell the product abroad.

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