Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, for taking this matter on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin. I would have preferred if she was here. Nevertheless, I know he will carry the messages to her. I slightly refined the message from the Topical Issue matter to say that clearly this office will not close. It seems that Fáilte Ireland will open it for what it determines to be the relevant part of the season, which is June to September. Fáilte Ireland lacks ambition and vision in this, despite its excellent work in marketing our country and in tourism and product development through the years. I do not like to see an organisation like this beginning to move away from being public-facing. If we are going to limit our tourism activities, marketing and tourism information points with trained, expert tourism personnel dealing with the public, I would assume that we are a different country, with some sort of Mediterranean climate, where all the tourism will be coming to our beaches in June, July and August. Of course, that is not our product. What about historical, cultural, sports, archaeological, adventure, activity, music or nature tourism? We need to market all of these all year round.

In the last full year of tourism, we had about 3.6 million first-time visitors to Ireland, with about 5.2 million visitors in total. We are bad at repeat tourism. The key to successful business is repeat custom and holding on to one's customer. One does that in tourism by embracing what is known as place-bonding. People have bonded to a place. They want to go back to Newcastle West in Limerick, Kildare, Sligo or Dublin because they have had personal interaction with professionals.

We are bad at repeat business. Less than one third of our custom in tourism comes back to us. Repeat visitors are where people power and people interaction help to build place bonding.

Another thing we dismiss is the need for people to interact. I will quote from a publication by Fáilte Ireland. Regarding our domestic market, it states "the high existing level of domestic tourism consumption by Irish residents, limits the potential for further growth from domestic demand". In other words, we ignore it. This is also a fool's errand because we export 40 million bed nights per year. I would like to have a few of those in the Ceann Comhairle's County Kildare, the Minister of State's County Limerick and my county, Sligo, and that takes work. We need public-facing offices, not automated machines. Nobody went or returned to Disneyland based on an overwhelming online welcome. It is personal interaction that the Irish céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes, is based on. Fáilte Ireland, despite its brilliant work for which it is globally famous, is now putting its back to the public and deciding that we have "seasonality", which limits the potential and lacks the vision and ambition of Seán Lemass's setting up of the regional tourism organisations in 1964, under the second economic plan, with T. K. Whitaker. Why are we pulling back from that vision now? Why are we seeking to put this online?

I want the Minister of State to relate to the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, the fact that in our region in particular, the north west, tourism is the sector with the most growth potential and the opportunity to produce jobs and revenue faster.

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