Terry Brennan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In respect of the CSO figures released yesterday, I welcome the news that overseas travel increased by 8.9% last year. There were 618,500 more visitors last year compared to 2013, which was the year of The Gathering and a phenomenal year for tourism that we did not think would be surpassed. There were 7.6 million visitors to Ireland last year, which was a wonderful year for Irish tourism. This is a significant increase following the very successful year of The Gathering. The figures issued yesterday confirm that 2014 was the best year ever in terms of the numbers of visitors from North America and mainland Europe. No doubt, overseas tourism is playing a major role in our economic recovery with overall employment in tourism estimated to be in the region of 200,000. The aim of this Government is to increase revenue from tourism to €5 billion per annum and to increase the number of people employed to 250,000.

No doubt the reduction in the airport tax to 0% and the retention of the VAT on tourism-related services at 9% were major factors in the increased number of visitors to our country last year.