Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I find myself in agreement with the overall thrust of what my colleagues, the two previous speakers, have said. In the first instance, it is two years since we held a discussion on tourism in the House and it is good that the Minister of State, Deputy Griffin, is here. I cannot think of anybody in the Houses of the Oireachtas who is more suitable to the role of tourism Minister. He has character, intelligence, great wit and great charm. He epitomises everything that is good about the west and County Kerry, and that is what we need going abroad. I welcome him formally to this House to talk to us in his capacity as Minister with responsibility for tourism about what is the jewel in our economic crown as far as I am concerned.

We have had a recession for the past decade but the sector that has continued to grow in those difficult years has been tourism. Our natural resource is not oil, steel or anything like that. It is our céad míle fáilte, our landscape, our scenery and our unique character as a people. It is what we are and it is what defines us that attracts the world to our shores.

Much has happened. The Wild Atlantic Way is a classic example of what we can achieve when we work together and pull all the various strands together in a focused international marketing effort. Prior to the Wild Atlantic Way, we had Clare competing with Kerry, Kerry competing with Cork and all of us competing with Connacht. Now what we have is all of us working together, telling the people of the world to come to Ireland and walk, cycle, drive or stay on our Wild Atlantic Way. Up until then, there was the Camino, which is very beautiful, but I would suggest that the Wild Atlantic Way is as beautiful and has as much to offer. In many ways it has much more to offer because we have character, energy, tradition, culture, music, the spoken word, stories, seanchaís, fairies and shamrocks. We have what people want. We have an experience that is weatherproof. People do not come to Ireland for the sunshine. They come to Ireland for all of the above. They come here to experience what is different and unique about Ireland.

There is much that needs to be done to improve it. I agree with Senator Ned O'Sullivan and others that chefs pose a big problem. We need joined-up thinking between the Departments of the Ministers of State, Deputy Griffin and Deputy Halligan, to put programmes in place to ensure that the restaurants stay open seven days a week. There are restaurants in my area that could only open at weekends last summer because they could not get chefs to work the other days. We need to look at that. That is a challenge.

The rip-off republic is back. There is no point in saying otherwise. People are greedy. Human nature, unfortunately, creates a certain greed in individuals. We have seen it. Five or six years ago, many of us from the country who come to Dublin to work were getting rooms for €40 or €50 a night. It is now €140 or €150. The reality is somewhere in between but it certainly is not €150 a night in the dead of winter when there is nothing much happening in the city. That needs to be looked at.We need to ensure that the people who work at the coalface of tourism are trained to the highest possible standard in customer service. In particular, we must ensure that they understand the uniqueness of this country and what attracts people here. We must ensure that they are trained and equipped to wear the green jersey. We also need to ensure that standards are kept at an acceptable level across the various suites of accommodation. I do not know if a particular standard applies to holiday homes, for example, as applies to bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels that have a star rating.

Airbnb needs to be regulated. There are some unscrupulous owners of desperate kips who offer Airbnb accommodation and rip-off unsuspecting decent people who come here to experience what is good here. Unfortunately, people end up in terrible accommodation because the Airbnb website is unmanaged and unregulated. Many thousands of people offer a high-quality service on Airbnb but, unfortunately, a minority do not offer accommodation that is up to the standard that we expect when we go abroad, and that we want this country to offer people who are good enough to visit Ireland.

Capital funding needs to be significantly increased so that we can offer tourism projects year around and which are weather resistant. There are lots of wonderful interpretive centres in this country but we need more, and we need more variety. Let us say somebody travels to County Clare for a week. I believe there should be enough indoor activities available during the day to occupy people and compliment everything that is provided in the evening by the people who work in the hospitality industry. There are challenges but the good news is that 9.9 million people chose to visit this country in 2017. I have no doubt that that figure will increase in 2018 and that it will continue to increase.

We need the people in the private sector who work in the tourism sector to be flexible because we are an island nation and, therefore, we will be affected by international circumstances whatever they may be. I recall that in 2001 the Minister spoke about his experiences in terms of the 9/11 attacks. One business lesson that I learned was from Mr. Mark Nolan and his team in Dromoland Castle. The morning after the terrorist attacks in New York the castle switched its entire marketing budget for America to Europe and mainland Britain. As a result, the hotel was full that year and for the next two years simply because the castle was flexible enough to move its budget and react to international circumstances. That is what must happen with an island nation. We cannot be entrenched and need to be totally flexible.

Earlier Senator Ó Céidigh spoke about airports and I agree with him that they are extremely important. I believe we should consider arranging public service obligations between Ireland and other European countries that have connectivity throughout the world. Therefore, an airline could buy into a PSO arrangement between Kerry Airport and Stansted Airport or another hub thus allowing millions of passengers to travel. We need to think outside the box and be creative. The Gathering initiative and the creation of the Wild Atlantic Way were examples of thinking outside the box. We need to continue such thinking because tourism is the one industry that is somewhat recession proof, will create thousands of jobs and is a natural resource.