Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. Around this time last year, I was up in his constituency with him and I would dearly love to be able to go back there again. It is a fabulous part of the country with huge potential. Massive progress has been made in recent years and I hope we can drive it further.

To answer a couple of the questions the Deputy asked, with regard to VAT my view is that while it is a matter for the Department of Finance primarily, in the current context a 0% VAT rate would be appropriate for the industry. To answer the question directly, I absolutely echo the calls from various bodies. These days, I spend most of my life on the phone to people in the industry whom I have met over the past three years and gotten to know. There are great people in the industry. These are issues we are constantly discussing. It is something that is necessary to give us a fighting chance to recover as quickly as possible and take on the significant international competition. It is only when we go to events such as the World Travel Market in London or ITB Berlin and see the huge number of exhibitors from throughout the world that we realise how competitive it is for Ireland and how well we do relatively speaking as a small island with regard to the numbers we attract every year. We were up to almost 11 million before this happened. I hope we can get back there again.

With regard to dedicated Ministries, many sectors will need intensive work to get them going again and tourism will be no different. The size of the tourism industry is enormous, comprising 11% of the workforce, and this is very important. I am not Taoiseach yet so I do not get to decide which Ministries go where but it would be very beneficial to our industry and I certainly think it would be a positive move.

With regard to what is happening at present, Tourism Ireland is monitoring its markets but it is not spending as it normally would because people simply are not booking at present because of the huge uncertainty. However, the organisation is making the most of people looking at social media and looking for escapism when they are in self-isolation or lockdown. Tourism Ireland has been very active online in promoting Ireland and imagery from Ireland. Very recently, that imagery included Sligo and some of the cinematography in "Normal People", which was partly filmed there. They had to be selective with the cinematography as not everything is suitable for worldwide distribution from a tourism perspective. Sligo always looks fantastic on screen and Tourism Ireland has been working on that front so that when things start happening again, it will be able to get going as quickly as possible.

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