Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I raise the issue of tourism and the effect that the pandemic has had on the sector, particularly on the coach operators who are one of the main actors in the industry in Ireland. The €55 million strategic fund that is being administered by Fáilte Ireland and was announced in the budget is extremely welcome but, unfortunately, the coach operators do not have access to that fund. Thousands of people are employed to drive coaches and to maintain them. It is worth in the region of €400 million a year to the economy and those operators are mainly small, family-run businesses that spend money going abroad marketing themselves each year.

I know that the Minister recently wrote to the umbrella group of coach and tourism operators to state that she would pass their correspondence on to Fáilte Ireland and ask it to consider it. I would like a little more than that. The coach operators are the backbone of tourism in this country because they bring people from A to B to C very eloquently. They sell our country on a daily basis when they bring people around to see our beautiful island. I believe that they should have access to that €55 million fund because they have to keep their fleets of buses insured and maintained. They also need to pay mortgages and loans on those fleets of buses, which are not cheap.

I ask the Deputy Leader to facilitate a debate early in the new year with the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, on the important role that the coach industry has in rebuilding our tourism industry, post pandemic. As the Cathaoirleach knows because of the county from which he comes, the first thing that got us out of the most recent recession and helped to rebuild the country was tourism. That will happen again but it will not be as successful as we would like unless the coach operators in this country are kept in business.