Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if I will take the full eight minutes but I thank the Acting Chair for the offer.

It is great to have this debate. It is very important one. I acknowledge the report of the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media, who is with us today. I thank the members of the committee who did all the heavy lifting in putting it together. It is a very fine document. An awful lot of issues have been outlined which need to be acknowledged. The staffing issue is usually the big one. It is a really fair point. In light of where we are with our staffing issues in Ireland and where we are in terms of full employment, it is important to make sure we have rights for our employees. That is mentioned in several parts of the report. We have a mixture of people who work in the industry. We also have people who want to work in the industry but accommodation is a big part of it. In Kinsale, we have an awful lot of people who come from abroad to work in the trade but need to find accommodation. The proposed restrictions on Airbnb will somewhat help those people to find cheap affordable accommodation in towns like Kinsale. I hope that is going to be important in making sure they have a viable income when they come to work in Ireland.

Many students work in our trade. I have two nieces who work every weekend in a restaurant in Kinsale. This type of employment provides a great outlet and a wonderful opportunity for people to engage with others and to get a good income for the hours they do. It is something that needs to be promoted. It is one of the things we need to start talking about. We all worked in a bar or a restaurant when we were growing up. In my case it was many years ago, when I had black hair. This case needs to be made again. We need to go back and start talking about summer and weekend jobs. They are a great outlet for people and they actually frame people. They give people a great understanding of how to engage with the public. They can work in an industry at 18, 19 or 20 years of age and still have their college life afterwards. A campaign needs to be done to make sure an important focus is put on those people who could come back into the industry.

One of the issues that was mentioned was the lack of skilled workers coming into the trade. I often talk about the lack of chefs. There is an issue with work permits and ensuring they come in faster. Anyone in our society who wants to become a chef will need to be trained. Training in that sector is really important. Previously, there were programmes under FÁS and other regimes that were geared towards that. That kind of outlook is needed again to try to bring people into the trade because there is a decent living to be earned. It is a decent job in many ways. We need to look at that if we can.

There needs to be a whole-of-government approach to what we have as an entity or as a tourism product. I think the OPW has a huge stake in this. In Kinsale, there is James Fort, Charles Fort, Desmond Castle and the site of the Battle of Kinsale, but unfortunately the majority of those sites are closed to the public.They are national assets and there is a body of work to be done to ensure we can open them all up to tourists. As a colleague said, we must make sure we have an all-year-around tourism product, not just a seasonal one.

It is important to acknowledge the great success of the Wild Atlantic Way, which starts in Kinsale but does not end there. We have positive vibes coming from the industry and we have done a great deal in a short time. If we can do just do a little more, we will have a wonderful tourism product. That is what it is all about. The report is most welcome and I commend everyone involved in it. If we just join the dots, we can do even better.