Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party) | Oireachtas source

This weekend's CSO figures on visitors to this country have cast a serious doubt over our once glorious tourism sector. The figures show a drop of 20% in the number of visitors in January and 30% in February. Visitor spending has dropped 31% in those two months compared to last year and overnight bed bookings are down 33%. This is a concern for cities like Dublin, Galway, Cork, Waterford and others but it is also a disaster for rural communities like west Cork, Kerry, Connemara, other areas and more if this trend continues.

The reasons given are cost of staying in Ireland, cost of food spiralling out of control and the low availability of hotel space, as many of our traditional hotels are now IPAS centres. This is not a dip. It is a collapse unless measures are immediately put in place to counteract this drop, such as a decrease in the VAT rate from 13.5% to 9% and the freeing up of hotels throughout the country. What are the Government's plans in counteracting this huge fall in the tourism sector numbers?

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