Seanad debates

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

10:30 am

Photo of Shane CassellsShane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, who is very welcome to the House. I wish her all the best in her new role in a new Department that has responsibility for media. I look forward to working with her as my party's spokesperson in that area not just in discussing the industry here but what is happening internationally. We saw what happened in Hungary last week when the staff of an entire newsroom resigned from the last independent news organ in that country because of state interference. I look forward to discussing such matters with the Minister when she returns to the Chamber.

This morning, we are dealing with the crucial tourism industry and I thank the Minister for what she has set out in her comments this morning. In preparing for the debate, the phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics" came to mind.People attempted to make arguments from all sides and some amount of statistics have been produced. Yesterday, I read the Minister, Deputy Ryan's response to a parliamentary question from Deputy Michael Healy-Rae on the numbers arriving into Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. That prompted a headline that 6,000 people were flying into Ireland every day, a third of them from the UK, 700 from Spain and 160 Yanks. One would get the impression, reading the sub-editor's headline, that this was a tsunami, however the CSO statistics show otherwise. On Sunday last, Sky News produced a special report from Ireland on the impact of Covid-19 on the Irish tourism industry which it filmed in Mayo. It focused specifically on the loss of the British market. A total of 5 million UK residents visit here in a normal year, and €1.4 billion of the €5 billion international market mentioned by the Minister is their spending. The 1,500 UK residents arriving into Ireland are a long way short of reaching the 5 million in a normal year, and the lost spend. I wish to focus on the spending of tourists. The Minister and the Government are doing everything possible to salvage the season through a focused range of measures for the domestic market. However, spending by the domestic market is notably less. Cork was mentioned in the reply to Deputy Michael Healy-Rae. The last available figures for Cork had 2.7 million people visiting "the real capital", of whom 1.6 million were from overseas and 1.1 million from Ireland. It is evenly balanced enough in visitors but the real difference is in the value of their spending. The overseas visitors were worth €631 million to Cork compared to €200 million from domestic visitors. Despite the hope of a big staycation surge in August, of which I will be a part as I am travelling to Kerry to try to boost the Cathaoirleach's county-----

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