Seanad debates

Tuesday, 5 April 2022

2:30 pm

Photo of Martin ConwayMartin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a few points and ask some quick questions of the Minister. As she is aware, I come from County Clare. There is a skills shortage, as previous speakers articulated. While I believe our Ukrainian visitors may actually help to alleviate the pressure in the short term, in the long term, we will need to get our act together when it comes to bringing back training for those in the hospitality sector, including chefs, and so on. At this stage, the 9% VAT rate for the hospitality industry needs to be permanent. There cannot be too many peaks and troughs. That is important.

The Cliffs of Moher are a gold-plated tourist attraction. If it is not the first, I think it is the second most visited attraction in the country. My fear is that the plans that Clare County Council has for the Cliffs of Moher will turn the attraction into a city or town of its own and suck the potential of all the other villages in north Clare. We need to grow all our villages organically. We must complement the Cliffs of Moher. We need people to be attracted to stay in north Clare and the rest of the county. If the council continues with the type of grandiose plans that are being talking about for the Cliffs of Moher, we will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. While a few million visitors a year are going to the cliffs, the north Clare community does not benefit to the degree that it should.

I support the suggestion made earlier that a representative from the pub, restaurant and gastropub industry be appointed to Fáilte Ireland. People come to our country to experience the gastropubs and restaurants.We can look at the number of restaurants now with a Michelin star or which are featured in the Michelin Guide. In County Clare we are delighted with the number of restaurants mentioned in the list of top 100 Irish restaurants in last weekend's newspaper. It is fitting and appropriate that there would be a representative from the restaurants and gastropub associations on Fáilte Ireland. For the life of me I cannot understand why that is not the case. Apparently, Fáilte Ireland's brief does not cover pubs and restaurants, and that oversight should be dealt with. If it requires a small piece of technical legislation, it can be introduced and we will initiate it here in the Seanad with no problem whatever. Perhaps it would only take the Minister signing a regulation to extend the board's remit or brief. If that is the case, I encourage the Minister to do that. In the first instance, having a representative of restaurants and gastropubs on the board should be possible because it should reflect a broad skill set.

I wanted to raise a number of other matters but, unfortunately, we do not have the time. It would be useful for the Minister to return in the term after Easter for further and more in-depth or detailed engagement on tourism.

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