Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution on this debate on sustainable tourism. I come from east County Galway, the second largest county. I think we could pilot making Galway a carbon-neutral county. We could deal with a few different aspects because we have extensive forestry and many wind farms there.

We are also looking to develop our greenway from Athenry to Tuam to Milltown, which would also feed into it. We have spoken about this project for many months and submissions have been made on it. The 46 km greenway in Waterford has been of great value. The Quiet Man greenway in Galway is 42 km long. It is adjacent to an existing old railway line so there is no issue with purchase of land or anything else. When the next phase covering the main axis across the country from Galway to Dublin is done, provided it does not go through productive farm land, it will provide access right into the west from Galway up into Mayo.

There are some great ideas in Mayo. In my recent election campaign I met many people in the European constituency of Midlands North West who talked about island hopping regarding cycling and everything else like that. It is a very novel idea and very sustainable. I am talking about the families around Inishbofin, Achill etc. It would spread tourism into areas that might never have had this industry previously, which would be very welcome.

If we are really serious about sustainable tourism, we will need people in key locations to drive these sorts of projects. We will need to have people anchored within the local authorities or LEADER programmes to deliver the mechanism for making the applications, for promoting this idea and for moving more to the sustainable carbon-neutral place that Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan just talked about. That is where we want the island of Ireland to go. We are green as a nation. Maybe certain things have got in the way. We may have too many cars on the road. Maybe we are not using public transport. Maybe we are not getting public transport into the areas that require it.

Athenry railway station is a really good story. The numbers going from Gort to Athenry to Galway have increased because people have changed how they get into and out of Galway because it is clogged with traffic. We should put down a second railway line from Athenry into Galway to encourage people not to clog up the city, leaving it more open for tourists to come and visit and use the rail because they do not know a functioning system is there.

Galway Chamber of Commerce has proposed having a light rail running around Galway city to take cars completely out of the city. Local people no longer shop in Galway at the weekends because they know they cannot get into and out of it, but a light rail system to get everybody around would actually work. It would also address a major issue with parking at Parkmore for the businesses there.

We need to start to think about who the key drivers in our community can be - people who can take really good policies that come through us here and connect with the local authority or with the LEADER programme. Communities are tiring because the same people are doing the same job all the time. I would welcome the opportunity to pilot some of this in Galway. We could appoint one person to look at a particular municipality or just look at east Galway itself and pilot the different aspects of tourism from a sustainable point of view. There is the built heritage in east Galway and the greenway would be there. The new freight into east Galway is people who will come and spend their money, but we need to be able to hold them. It should not be an experience of just passing through east Galway. We need to hold them for a day. They need to spend some of their money. They need to experience the food because we have the hub in gastronomy. Next year we will have Galway 2020. There is plenty of good stuff going on, not just in my constituency but throughout the country. The problem is that we are not able to hold them. It comes down to the people that the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport might put in position to try it out and see if it works.

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