Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State and thank the Leader for organising the debate at short notice. Senator Coghlan referred to tourism outside Dublin, on which I wish to focus. Dublin is the region with the highest number of tourists in the country. Jobs are mentioned repeatedly in this House. The fact tourism provides 200,000 jobs nationally is extraordinary. I come from the west. There are 2.75 million visitors, including some 1.4 million overseas visitors and 1.36 million domestic visitors, to Galway, Mayo and Roscommon each year. Let us not forget the importance of internal tourism. We need to encourage Irish people to travel around the country and partake of the various tourism attractions.

To outline the relative importance, 16% of our national tourism is in the western region which is important for it because it is not a major industrial region. We rely on many different things, but tourism is of huge importance to the part of the country from which I come. The revenue from direct tourism is €771.8 million. Overseas revenue is €497.7 million. Domestic revenue is €274 million. One thing on which Galway relies is a very good product, but we also rely on organising festivals and our fantastic scenery.

I live close to the beauty of Galway Bay. We are all familiar with the songs about Galway Bay. Bing Crosby is one of best advertisements for the tourism sector in Galway due to the song he sang about Galway Bay which was written by Dr. Arthur Colohan. The Government invested in the Volvo ocean race stopover which came to Galway city and, as a result, some €58.9 million was spent in Galway and some €36.5 million was spent outside Galway. We are hoping to have the stopover in Galway city again in the future. I cannot stress strongly enough that politicians from all sides are very much behind this. It is important that as a Government we invest in providing a certain amount of seed capital in order to be able to entice such great international events to come to Galway. Of further importance is the number of people who found out about our country as a result. There were television figures of 1.327 billion people for the race, with 234 billion radio listeners. These people will be aware of Ireland now. The satisfaction rating of the 650,000 people who came to Galway and Salthill during the ocean race was almost 100%. It was incredible. All those people went away with that memory. The further revenue this event could generate, not only for Galway at the time but for Ireland in the future, is incredible. It brings us very much into the international stage.

Previous speakers talked about the importance of eco-tourism. It must be recognised that even though today is a beautiful sunny day, unfortunately not every day is as sunny as it is in Spain. Ireland is not known as a sun resort but as a country with a nice, mild pleasant climate most of the year around. Our country has great attractions for many people. The climate here is warm enough and is very welcoming for many people. We have beautiful scenery, magnificent coast lines and a very pleasant environment. The west offers an experience that very few people forget.

However, our people are our greatest resource. The many festivals that happen in the west need to be supported by the Government. It is great to say there is an arts festival in Galway city which brings in €20 million. That is wonderful but it does not happen by accident. Many community groups come together to make that arts festival attractive to people. It is all very well saying we will run an arts festival every year which will bring in €20 million. Unfortunately, if those community groups are not supported there will be a serious problem because we will not be able to provide the attractive arts festival that happens every year in Galway. It is important that the Government provides money through the Arts Council and that funding is maintained. We are living in difficult economic times but the mix of arts and tourism is a good one. They come together very well, along with sports.

We should not forget the importance of sporting tourism which is enormous, especially the various international events, in particular those in Dublin. It would be nice to see international events happening throughout the country. As mayor, I had the pleasure of introducing one of the youth international teams to Terryland park to play football. There is a great possibility that with the assistance of the FAI and the IRFU we might try to encourage international sporting events in different parts of the country, especially at under age level. They do not all have to happen in Dublin.