Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government has always been very supportive of the tourism industry. When this Government came into office in 2011, the first budget introduced a one third reduction in VAT in the hospitality sector from 13.5% to 9%. That stimulated and incentivised, and was an enormous success in bringing about record levels of tourism this year. However, the hospitality sector has not reciprocated. It has once again become greedy. Hotel occupancy levels in this city are at an all-time high - Dublin has the highest bed occupancy of 50 cities looked at by PricewaterhouseCoopers last year. This year is projected to be the same.

I welcome the doubling of money from the State from €150 million to €300 million, which will allow us to engage in extra enterprises, projects and services related to the tourism industry.

I wish to point the Minister of State and Fáilte Ireland to what I regard as the greatest opportunity in Dublin at present. In recent decades there has been neglect of the tourism potential of the Dublin docklands. While regeneration has been going on for almost 30 years since the Urban Renewal Bill 1986 was introduced, nothing has been done about the potential of the docklands. There are docklands not just in Dublin but throughout the country that have enormous potential. However, Dublin is special. While the docklands have been the subject of regeneration for almost 30 years, this has only consisted of bricks and mortar - office blocks and housing. There is an enormously rich heritage on the docks, going back over hundreds of years, which has been totally neglected. At the junction of the River Liffey, the Royal Canal and the Irish Sea, we have Dublin Port. It has some incredible maritime, inland waterways and industrial history stretching back to the Vikings. This year we celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the State in 1916. The Lockout took place in 1913. Throughout that period normal docker activity took place there.

The Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society is doing Trojan work to highlight the potential in that respect. At present Dublin City Council is carrying out a heritage audit of the docklands under the auspices of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, following my request. There is an enormous amount of paraphernalia and material associated with the docklands currently in the port and in other storage areas, with the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, in folklore activities being done on an individual basis and otherwise, and we need to avail of that resource.

We need to establish a Dublin docklands heritage trail that would attract thousands of tourists and could rival - I am sure the Minister of State will be delighted to hear me say this - the Wild Atlantic Way that has been set up in recent years and is a wonderful asset that attracts tourists to an area they might otherwise not visit. It would also provide gainful and sustainable employment to the local docklands communities which, of course, have been ravaged over the years. The regeneration that has taken place has largely left them behind. With the extra funding being provided, this is something that Fáilte Ireland could seek to address. It could establish one of the finest tourist attractions anywhere in Ireland.

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