Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We need to know why Chinese people want to come to Ireland and what their travel patterns are but we do not have enough data on it.

I welcome the take-up of tourism promotion on the part of local authorities. When I was a county councillor we were always trying to get management in Kerry to be more hands-on and proactive in promoting tourism in the county. We are an easy county to promote because we have nature's bounty in our mountains, rivers and lakes but it is only in recent years that councils have got in on the game. Great work has been done in Kerry under the work of Joan McCarthy and her team, and Moira Murrell, the county manager. It seems that other counties are getting with the programme too, though I heard an anecdote this morning about a county manager in the midlands whose councillors wanted him to promote tourism, to whom he replied "This county is not Kerry". I will not name the county. We cannot all be Kerry and we cannot all be as fortunate as the Minister and myself to be born in County Kerry but one has to be more positive than the county manager.