Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House and I appreciate him being here on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin. I am very grateful that she sent her apologies to me yesterday. I want to speak about the importance of inclusive and accessible tourism. As a society, we recognise the necessity of ensuring everyone can participate in activities without restriction or barrier. This includes ensuring all people have the ability to travel and enjoy tourism experiences. Tourism is an essential component of our economy. It is crucial that we embrace the concept of inclusive and accessible tourism to ensure all people feel welcomed and valued.

It is completely unacceptable that many disabled individuals and their families face significant challenges and barriers when it comes to enjoying what our country has to offer.It is a missed opportunity for adventure, growth and learning, never mind an opportunity for financial reward from being able to get more customers. We cannot continue to exclude a large proportion of our community. We therefore need to work together to ensure that tourism facilities and destinations are made more accessible and welcoming for all. It is essential to provide information, training and support to tourism operators and stakeholders to ensure they can be responsive and can accommodate the needs of guests with disabilities.

For this reason, I believe the Government has a responsibility to create new funding schemes to support organisations and communities to upgrade their tourism facilities. Such a programme would give financial aid and capacity-building opportunities to businesses and individuals to make their facilities more accessible and welcoming for all. For example, we could have an accessible tourism enablers' grant that would improve tourism and events. Businesses could create more acceptable websites, guides, images and videos and introduce adaptive and assistive technologies and equipment that would maximise the visitor experience. We could have a tourism infrastructure grant to enhance and develop accessible tourism projects, raise awareness of accessible tourism experiences and enhance existing tourism infrastructure or products to develop accessible visitor experiences. We could have a boosting accessible tourism grant that would fund the development and enhancement of tourism products to create smaller scale infrastructures that would make things more accessible for everyone.

Through such schemes, the Government could inspire innovation in the tourism industry, paving the way for world-class accessible infrastructure and technologies that will be vital for a thriving tourism sector. I am in no doubt that funds such as this would increase the number of tourism experiences and events delivered for all our community. It would have a huge positive impact on communities for all visitors. It would also provide an economic opportunity for small businesses throughout the country to attract more customers.

By working together, we can make sure that travel and tourism experiences are more accessible and inclusive. There are so many barriers in our society. We all look forward to experiencing tourism and tourism experiences around this beautiful country during our summer break. There should not be any barriers to people with disabilities in our families and communities.