Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)

I am happy to work closely with Deputy Butterly on that. Another area I am actively working on is expanding the remit of Fáilte Ireland. One of the first things I did was to take a deep dive of the legislation that underpins the State agency. I want to include a restaurant sector. It is key as regards developing its model. Fáilte Ireland has focused on hotels but if we look further afield, our restaurants are key to our value proposition for tourism and are keen to absorb that capacity. As I come forward with our tourism plan in September, there will be a key focus on: developing our SMEs with Fáilte Ireland taking a greater role in that; looking at how we expand the season from St. Brigid’s Day right out to Hallowe’en as there is a huge amount we can do in that regard; looking at slow tourism; and looking at trying to ensure our destination experience development plans attract the capital investment the State needs for towns like Ardee. I know the Deputy is a great advocate for Drogheda and Dundalk as well in the work she does. I look forward to working with her on those key areas.

The Deputy rightly pointed out that food is a very important niche for Ireland and it can sometimes be alarming when one is abroad, particularly from a European perspective, that people can have a very different idea of what our food is. That is why we need a joined-up approach in regard to our food. It was embarked upon a few years ago but was not followed through. This is something I will work closely on with State agencies.

I acknowledge also Tourism Ireland and the work it does in advocating to ensure we can increase capacity of tourists coming to our country and have better transport through aviation, which will be key to improve the statistics over the later part of the year.

I must reflect upon one thing. The year 2024 was a bumper year for tourism and it will be hard to repeat. Current levels show we are strongly up on 2023 but I am sure we will have a good second half of the year, which is where it counts. The middle part of the year is when the real business is done for tourist operators. We look forward to supporting them as well as supporting County Louth, Drogheda, Dundalk, Ardee and all the towns the Deputy brought me to recently.

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