Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise a couple of points with the Minister in regard to tourism in Ireland and this Bill. First, there is a lot of development that has to happen to increase the benefits to communities and counties with regard to the heritage and tourism sites that they have. To give an example, in Meath most tourism is currently on the basis of a coach bus out of a Dublin hotel that hits Newgrange and Trim Castle and then returns to the Dublin hotel for dinner. What I have been trying to do for the last 12 years is to have a greenway going from the source of the River Boyne to the estuary. I passed a motion in the council 12 years ago and a tiny bit of work has been done in some places in that regard. Everybody here is, of course, going to sing the praises of their own locality, but the Boyne Valley is very significant in that it is our Valley of the Kings in many ways. It has the only UNESCO world heritage site in this jurisdiction, it has the Hill of Tara, which has such an international reputation, it has the Battle of the Boyne site and it has Trim Castle and all of the other elements. This particular greenway would be internationally recognised in terms of bringing tourists to this country yet its development has been pretty much stagnant in the last five or six years.

For me, it is an example of some of the difficulties that I hope Deputy Martin will be able to grapple with in her time as Minister. We have a dysfunction in how we deal with projects in this country. It takes forever and an age to deliver some of the simplest things. I do not know whether it is inertia within the higher echelons of the public service or elsewhere but if this was the private sector, it would not take 12 years to even get a couple of kilometres paved.

Another example is the Hill of Tara, which was the site of the high kings of Ireland and it is our Stonehenge in many ways. Again, I spoke to previous Ministers in Deputy Martin's position about the development of a plan for the Hill of Tara. One was published at the start of this month, and I praise the Lord for that and it is good news that it has happened, but it is still a prime example of how slow it is to move projects on in this country.

I want to mention Sliabh na Caillí at Loughcrew, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic passage grave or cairn which contains Neolithic artwork. It is being held up by a rusty acrow at the moment. Any state must be a philistine state to deal with such a level of historic and heritage importance in this way.

Another example of where we are glacially slow in the development of heritage projects is Moore Street. Again, I have spoken to Minister after Minister with regard to, first, the importance of that battlefield site and, second, its potential in terms of tourism. Yet, we have this shocking situation where it is now at the centre of enormous and grave allegations around potential corruption, where allegations were made in newspapers and the print media and where it is alleged the traders of Moore Street were pressurised with the attraction of money to vote in favour of the Hammerson planning application on that site. That was meant to be open in 2016 as a visitor site but it is still lying idle. Right now, Moore Street is famous for a number of things: defecation, urination and alcohol and drug abuse. That is what is happening on this battlefield site, the birthplace of this nation. If the Minister were to leave a legacy, it would be to inject a system into the Department to deliver these projects on time and in a speedy manner. It is a monument to what is wrong with the delivery of projects in this country.

There are currently three tourism bodies on the island of Ireland, Tourism NI, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland. To have three organisations working on such a small island is not an efficient use of resources. I understand the structure is a hangover from the Good Friday Agreement but we really need to get to one tourism body, North and South, with efficiency in terms of staff, offices and the marketing of this country.

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