Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join colleagues in calling on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to engage with the World Health Organization in support of Taiwan. It is a most hospitable country and one which does its business right, as we see in its record in dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. We can all learn a thing or two from them.

Speaking of Covid-19, I hear Members calling for exemptions for various activities and many of the cases they are making are strong. However, I suggest that there will not be any changes or any further dilution for the next four weeks of level 5. It is appropriate that we look at how to deal with any future level 5 lockdowns because even if a vaccine is developed, I suspect unfortunately that we will be moving into further phases of level 4 or 5 restrictions in the first half of 2021. As for rebuilding or economy, it is fair to say that the Cathaoirleach's county and my county would have seen tourism kick-start their economies after the last recession. Between 2010 and 2013 in particular, we saw the tourism numbers grow. We saw hundreds of thousands of people working in tourism when there were not jobs in other sectors of society. I earnestly believe tourism will be the first industry that will kick-start our recovery. With that in mind, I suggest to the Leader that we have a considered debate on tourism with the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media in the not too distant future. We need to invest in gold-plated tourist facilities across the country. In addition, each county should have at least one gold-plated facility like we in County Clare have with the Cliffs of Moher visitor experience. We also need to develop silver-plated facilities because people will come to the area for a day, visit the Cliffs of Moher and then leave. We want to keep them in the area for two or three days. We need to invest in other facilities that would feed from the gold-plated facilities.