Derek Keating (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McNamara for sharing time with me.

I welcome the National Tourism Development Authority (Amendment) Bill 2015, part of which gives additional funding to Fáilte Ireland and makes it more accountable to the Dáil. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, for taking part in this Second Stage debate. It is no surprise that tourism and sport are inextricably linked in a Department. When we fund one, it helps promote the other. For example, tourism would benefit if our application for the 2023 Rugby World Cup was successful. I know 27,000 Irish fans have already applied for tickets for the European football championship this year. One can see how tourism and sport are inextricably linked. One of the Government’s great successes has been in the whole area of tourism and sport. In our first budget, we turned everything on its head by reducing the VAT rate for tourism-related activities to 9% which has been very successful. From all quarters, we hear how our tourism prospects have been enhanced by that measure.

In sport, the Minister of State has opened up a variety of different grants, including sports capital grants. Recently, I had the opportunity of welcoming a Spanish family who were touring the country to my home community. They have been in touch with me regularly and told me the other day they brought their children swimming. Of course, they did not find a swimming pool in our local community but in Clondalkin. I happened to have opened that swimming pool as deputy mayor of South Dublin County Council in 2007. It is a wonderful facility which enhances the well-being not only of the local community but of visitors and tourists alike.

I noted the Minister of State recently provided an opportunity for expressions of interests for a new swimming pool programme. I have contacted my local authority to encourage it to meet the deadline. Will the Minister of State look on its application favourably?

4 o’clock

I acknowledge the wonderful work that has been done by the local volunteers in the Pool4Lucan campaign. As a councillor in 2006 and 2007, I held the plans for that pool in my hands. I hope it is nearing an advanced stage and that it will be become reality in the very near future, thanks to 20 years of campaigning on my part and that of many others. It will benefit the overall well-being of the community, visitors and tourists alike.

I accompanied the Minister of State on visits to many clubs. Many clubs in my constituency of Dublin Mid-West will benefit from sports capital grants that the Minister of State's Department announced in recent years. That will ensure that more local people, as well as tourists, will benefit from those quality facilities.

A great concern I have about our tourism sector, to which my colleagues, Deputies Costello and Buttimer, alluded, is the high price of hotel accommodation. I am a Dublin Deputy living in west Dublin, which is the gateway to tourism in the west. Occasionally, when there are late sittings or early morning sittings, I stay in town, like many of my rural colleagues who must stay in town when the Dáil is sitting. I have seen the incremental increase in the price of hotel rooms. I want to send out the strongest possible message about this and I ask the Minister of State to join me, in whatever appropriate way his office can, in appealing to the hotel industry to consider the damage that will be done to our tourism industry if those high prices are maintained. We must put a stop to that.

We are investing a good deal in the tourism sector. Reference was made to the Wild Atlantic Way initiative, which is a wonderful one. Despite such investment, the high price of hotel rooms and, consequently, the high cost of visiting this country will be disincentive for many people to visit it. We need to marry our natural resources and our natural environment, which is such an attraction for so many people in the world, with the initiatives being rolled out and the facilities we have in place. We need to be very careful with respect to our hotel industry that we do not go the way we did a number of years ago and damage our prospects. I will conclude on that point as I want to allow time for Deputy McNamara to contribute. I thank him for sharing his time with me.

See this speech in context