Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House. He outlined the picture very well for us.

In 2010 the number of overseas visitors had fallen by 16% in two years, but it is growing once again. The Minister has made several useful proposals to maintain this growth, including having lower VAT and PRSI rates, the visa waiver programme and improved air access. I understand 85% of the seats on the new routes from St. John's in Newfoundland to Dublin were booked out in a matter of four or five days. One would not have expected the route to be a huge success, but it is always welcome to have good surprises of that nature. However, are we once again setting out to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Senators on the Government side have noted that we have been here before and that previously it was appalling for the country. Between 2000 and 2009, the proportion of people who reported Ireland as offering poor or very poor value for money as a tourist destination increased from 12% to 40%. From what I have heard from the Government benches, I fear we may be doing the same again. There was a massive decrease in tourism figures in the period between 2007 and 2010. We lost approximately one quarter of visitors and 31% of revenue, according to briefing documents prepared for us on the Tourism Development Authority (Amendment) Bill 2011. I do not know what gets into people in this country that tourism becomes exceedingly bad value once it begins to revive. It is difficult to sell a product abroad if it is bad value. During the three years the tourism industry was falling apart, we spent €162 million promoting it in 2007, €179 million in 2008 and €150 million in 2009, but because of overcharging and it represented bad value for money, the business did not provide a return for the Exchequer and certainly did not do itself much good.

The key sentence in the Minister's speech is that his Dublin proposal will involve a balance of funding from the public and private sectors.

If somebody stays in one's hotel, one gets to keep the money. That is called capitalism in some quarters. It is incumbent on the industry to participate with the Minister on the proposals to develop Dublin. One cannot expect the State to do the marketing for a sector that turns out to be pretty bad value for money, when we examine what consumers have said. We do not want to become complacent because, as I said, we have been here before.

We have to consider whether we want this sector. Senators opposite said they would like to see Irish people working in tourism venues, and I agree with that. However, either we are serious about developing tourism and the people who want to work in the sector, or we accept that they want to work elsewhere and allow people from other countries, who kept tourism going in the past decade, to work in tourism. We need to ask whether we are serious about promoting a sufficient level of training and entrepreneurship in the sector.

I agree with the Minister on air access. It is a topic we have discussed many times. I welcome that Michael Cawley is assisting the Minister in developing that.

In a speech by one of the directors of the strategic investment fund at the weekend, it was stated that the fund might invest in hotels, holiday homes, reservations systems, sport facilities and theme parks. Again, one has to advise caution. We invested during the boom era in hotels which lost up to 95% of their capital value. One has to want to extend hospitality, have good food and housekeeping and have a willingness to welcome visitors. Running tourism as a branch of the construction industry is another failed experiment that we have tried, and it is to be hoped that we do not go there again. It is a very sophisticated industry and some of the approaches in the past were not conducive to our long-term development.

A report similar to the theme of the Minister's speech is the Dublin City Business Association report on developing Dublin. As the Minister said, it has been losing market share. Senator Norris and others have pointed out that a lot of the north inner city is in a pretty bad condition despite the efforts of Dublin City Council to revive O'Connell Street. It points out that Edinburgh Castle has an income of €20 million per annum, 40 times the income of Dublin Castle, which is probably a finer set of buildings. Let us see what the task force on developing the city of Dublin as a tourism venue can accomplish.

Involving local chambers of commerce and business groups, as the Minister intends to do, in taking on some of the marketing expenses is an extremely good idea and one that is well worth pursuing. We had a good record at the beginning of the last decade and a very high percentage of people thought coming here was good value for money. We lost that steadily and are now building it back up, but we could lose it again just as quickly.

I welcome the Minister's initiatives and assure him of any support we can give on these benches, but becoming over-confident in this sphere could be very dangerous. We made a lot of mistakes in the past, and the boom period was the harbinger of a doom period in Irish tourism from which we are now recovering.

In terms of major events, I favour the Rugby World Cup, but the Minister's predecessor had concerns about how much we would have to pay for it. I understand New Zealand lost money on it, and the famous case is that of Montreal, which continued to pay for the Olympics decades after the event was over. Such events sound very good and there is a short-term boost, but we need to consider whether there is a long-term cost as the debts are paid off from the large subsidies which must be given. It is something of which the Minister and his officials have to be particularly watchful. They need to check whether the cost-benefit analysis is independently done. I wish Hugo MacNeill, a fellow economist from TCD, every success in the project, but we have to check whether hosting the Rugby World Cup would cost the Exchequer, as it did in New Zealand and as the Olympic Games did in Montreal.

This is an industry in which we should be performing better. We need to turn our promotional efforts into much better results than we did from 2007 to 2010, during which time almost €500 million was spent on a industry that was in decline. We need to insist that those involved recognise the difference between the inputs, which were extensive and expensive at the time, and the actual business generated.

Those who arrive at Rosslare Harbour have to walk about half a mile to get a train. I do not know why we took the train station out of the Europort, which was built with a European grant. Dún Laoghaire Harbour has been allowed to decline and very few tourists arrive there any more. A lot of money was spent on it in the past.