Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I saw a tweet recently showing the Deputy's cycling endeavours in cycling in from Clare. Fair play to him. It is the future of sustainable travel.

The Government travel advisory currently in operation against all non-essential international travel, in addition to other public health restrictions, means that unfortunately there is virtually no inbound tourism at present. As a result, Tourism Ireland, the body responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas as a holiday destination, has suspended the majority of its overseas marketing campaigns. Any recommencement of active marketing of Ireland overseas will be guided by the public health advice and decisions by Government on international travel. 

Tourism Ireland is, however, undertaking an extensive, largely virtual, programme of activity to ensure that we are in the best possible place to immediately start converting business for tourism operators across the island of Ireland when the time is right. While we continue to face quite a bit of uncertainty, Tourism Ireland is actively planning for the restart of inbound tourism and in that regard, is developing a new business plan incorporating a three-phase approach to restart, rebuild and ultimately redesign demand.

The restart phase will involve the development of a range of immediate kick-start activities to drive demand for travel to Ireland, as soon as it is safe to do so. The rebuild phase will be rolled out as demand begins to return and will include highly visible activity in our overseas markets with the greatest potential to deliver value. Demand management will be introduced during the redesign phase, to ensure tourism has a sustainable future and meets the long-term aspirations of the industry and the country.

Over the next number of years, it is likely that we will see an increase in demand for outdoor leisure experiences based on nature, such as walking, cycling and mountaineering. The Wild Atlantic Way has been a huge success to date and it will continue to be extensively promoted in Tourism Ireland’s future marketing campaigns. The EuroVelo 1 route overlaps with much of the Wild Atlantic Way and incorporates many of our most popular greenways. It is therefore very much aligned with some our key tourism policy objectives, such as the promotion of more outdoor leisure experiences and increasing tourism to the regions.

Both Tourism Ireland and I are very much open to leveraging the EuroVelo 1 route to promote cycling tourism in Ireland, should a suitable opportunity arise.

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