Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. He has an exciting portfolio at a very exciting time. Tourism in this country is working. The initiatives he outlined in his contribution are working. The welcome aspect in terms of tourism marketing is that we are taking a joined-up, corporate, professional approach. The Gathering was the first attempt at having an international corporate marketing campaign. Until then we had Kerry promoting Kerry, Clare promoting Clare and so on but The Gathering was Ireland promoting Ireland, which was the only way to do it.

The Wild Atlantic Way is well able to compete with places such as the Camino and so on. Again, a corporate approach was taken to that in terms of pulling together all our assets and presenting them abroad as an attractive package. The concept of the Wild Atlantic Way is working, and the proof of that is the Cliffs of Moher visitor experience which had over 1 million visitors this year. That is a credit to all involved but I consider the Cliffs of Moher, along with a number of other tourist attractions, as a gold plated attraction and we need to invest in the silver plated attractions. The gold plated attraction will bring people into the vicinity but the silver plated attractions will keep them in the area. For example, the Cliffs of Moher attracts 1 million visitors but, unfortunately for County Clare, most of them are day trippers from Limerick, Dublin or Galway. They do not stay overnight in County Clare so in order to put together a package that is attractive for those people to stay after they have done the four hour trip to the Cliffs of Moher, we must invest in silver plated facilities. We must ensure we have proper sports facilities, amenities and other attractions to promote, even if we need tax incentives to encourage people to build tourism-specific attractions.

I know someone who is attempting to create a miniature fishing village and they are going through various hoops in terms of planning and so on. That is not to do with apartment complexes, hotels or anything like that. It is a product that is specific to tourism that would work and add to the suite of services, facilities and attractions available to tourism.

We must invest also in year-round facilities. Our tourism season in the cities is almost a 12 months business but in rural areas, seaside resorts and so forth there is no reason we cannot extend the tourism season to eight to ten months of the year, and that will be done by effective and clever investing in weather resistant facilities.

There is a lot more I could say-----