Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. We have to acknowledge she has had a baptism of fire in the short time she has been in her Department. We would like to see more of her ability, which we know she has, when we get over this pandemic and she gets to it, and expect to see great measures in tourism.

Tourism has evolved in recent years. I come from Donegal, in the north west, where we have seen much more potential for tourism in recent years with the Wild Atlantic Way. However, there are many difficulties being faced by many in the tourism sector including hoteliers, restaurant and pub owners and small tourism businesses. I spoke to a hotelier in the past few days who is in turmoil. This person has restructured loans. The payments are welcome but they go nowhere near toward paying his loans. They are not the same because there is no certainty. I am aware of the difficulty in trying to create that certainty but the quicker we get a roadmap, the better because people in those businesses are in turmoil.

I extend to the Minister an invitation to visit Donegal at her earliest convenience. I understand she was brought up in Monaghan so she is not too far from Donegal and is probably familiar with much of it. Our county is somewhat similar to Monaghan in the way we were affected by the Troubles over the years. While tourism is somewhat of a commodity in Donegal, it is nothing like what it could be because during those decades of the Troubles we were cut off. We have about 8 km or 9 km adjoining the South. When I was a child travelling through the North the roads were a great thing; now, they are just bottlenecks. That is an idea of the infrastructure deficit we have in the whole north west. Counties like Donegal, Derry, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Sligo and Leitrim have a general population of 500,000 people. As far as getting our slice of the cake is concerned, we are nowhere near where we should be in terms of roads and tourism.

I come from a peninsula called Fanad, which is roughly the size of Dublin city outside the M50. We have some of the most fabulous beauty spots the Minister has ever seen. The beach near where I am from was voted the second most beautiful in the world in 1994 by The Times. Fanad Lighthouse was voted the second most beautiful in the world in recent years. There are many other attractions across Donegal. It has the highest cliffs in Europe and the most northerly point in Malin. The area where I am from on the Fanad Peninsula does not even have a hotel. Something needs to happen in terms of rebalancing tourism in this country. There is an opportunity to do that with the national development plan review. Areas such as those where I am from do not expect to get any more than that given to the rest of the country but in better times other counties got incentives to build hotels and other tourism infrastructure and to start their small businesses. There is an excellent opportunity now to do that.

With regard to the national development plan, it should be looked at using a wider scope. What can we develop that is different in respect of our tourism infrastructure? An issue I spoke about here previously is one I feel strongly about. A friend of mine, Hugh Friel, is a former chair of Tourism Ireland and a former CEO of the Kerry Group. He is now living in Kerry but he is also a Fanad man. We have spoken many times about tourism in Donegal and how we can get to where other countries are in that regard. There needs to be a change in the mindset and incentives must be provided. He has taken me to Kerry and shown me the different areas where they built marinas.Anywhere that a marina was built, other infrastructure fell into place afterwards. Over the 20 years of the national development plan, Project Ireland 2040, we must build marinas around the coast. Everything does not have to be built tomorrow but we must make a start. There is significant potential in doing this and it is an opportunity to look after smaller businesses and incentivise start-ups.