Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would echo what my colleague Senator Landy said about the importance of tourism, and Senator Brennan spoke about this last week or the week prior to that. We should debate that subject more in this House. The one thing that we as a country should have learned from the crash and crisis we have been through in recent years is that we should play to our strengths. The strategy behind tourism in the past four of five years has been smart, innovative, creative and successful. We had The Gathering which was the first attempt at a corporate branding where we pulled together all the strengths, appealed to the diaspora and, in turn, we got the results. The Wild Atlantic Way is a similar example of success, which pulls together the strengths and beauty of the various counties into something that rivals the Camino or any of the great walks of the world. It has been a great success.Despite a very limited budget the Wild Atlantic Way has repaid its investment 20-fold and other parts of the country need the same type of corporate approach. Until five years ago Kerry was competing against Clare, Clare was competing against Galway we were all competing against each other. At the Irish festival in Milwaukee, every county had their own stand and instead of combining all our resources and promoting Ireland we were promoting each county. We had a situation in which there was an airport in every county, which was not smart, given the size of our island.

I call for a debate after Easter on Ireland as a world class tourism destination. I ask the Leader to organise statements on the subject and to invite the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, who was down in Doolin last Friday even though I was here carrying out my Seanad duties. He opened the Doolin rescue centre.