Results 3,481-3,500 of 10,556 for speaker:Niamh Smyth

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Do any of the other officials wish to make a general summary or comment on their own areas of expertise? If not, we can proceed to Senator Malcolm Byrne's questions or comments.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: I am going to hop and skip a little across all the different programmes. I will go to programme A, dealing with tourism. Could I extrapolate a little the rationale for selecting air access capacity as an appropriate impact indicator for the tourism services programme?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Would that have not been more obviously under the Department of Transport rather than this Department?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Will Mr. Gleeson address the impact of a change in calculation metrics on the values obtained in 2021 for the changes in air access capacity and how the 2021 value can stand in comparison with the 2020 and 2019 values?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: That is fine. I will move to programme B, dealing with arts and culture, which is my favourite of all. Will Ms Nash speak a little about the impact indicators that directly measure the impact of funding from the output indicators?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Who devised the programmes?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Will Ms Nash refresh my memory on the training schemes she mentioned? Did she mention three schemes?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Excellent. We have covered a lot of those topics and we would be more than happy to hear about them.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: It will further increase the demand for hotel rooms around the city. Turning to broadcasting, could we talk about the lack of output or impact indicators for the community media piece, such as expenditure on community broadcasting, the number of hours of community broadcasting per day and the reach of community media?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Obviously, the sound and vision fund was a huge help to them in sustaining their viability during the pandemic. It would be nice to see some feedback from that. I have not come to Mr. Healy yet. What is his area?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: I might not have a question for him. We did not do anything on sports yet. Who covers sports?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: I am afraid I am not a Gaelgóir, Mr. Ó Conaire. Could you give some details on the steps the Department is taking to meet the targets established from the output indicators?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Have we no analysis of that yet?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Will Mr. Ó Conaire elaborate on the large scale sport infrastructure fund? He said it was launched in 2018 just before Covid hit.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Most of these projects are not yet completed. They are under way.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Is the Department making any plans for the fact of inflation, which Mr. Ó Conaire alluded to? Projects that may have been set at a particular price will be hit by 30% increases or maybe more.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage will have looked at that in respect of some of the urban regeneration projects. Local authorities have stated they were granted €14 million, for example, but, in fact, it will now take €20 million to deliver a project. A scheme is now in place where the State meets 70% of that extra cost and local authorities will have to...

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: On a different topic but still within the area of sport, will Mr. Ó Conaire talk a little about the detail of the breakdown of the number of international competitions from 2019 to 2021 in which Ireland participated and won medals?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: I will give Mr. Ó Conaire a break and come back to Ms Gleeson. Fáilte Ireland submitted written evidence to the committee in December 2021, which estimated there were 40,000 vacancies in the tourism industry. Could Ms Gleeson talk a little about whether those severe skills shortages were in the sector prior to the pandemic? If not, how can employment in the sector be returned to...

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: Public Service Performance Report 2021: Discussion (15 Jun 2022)

Niamh Smyth: Does the Department see that as having been the biggest problem during Covid, namely, that we lost that skill set to other industries? Was there a crisis in skills shortages prior to the pandemic or has this arisen as a direct result of the pandemic?