Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for outlining the business of the day. What I am looking for at some stage in the coming weeks is a debate on tourism, the importance of tourism and the challenges faced by tourism providers. We have a serious accommodation crisis because some of our hotels are being used, rightly so, to house Ukrainians. The tourism product we have in this country is extremely good but it can always be improved and worked on and we can develop new markets abroad. Over the past ten years we have faced a number of crises, from an economic crash to Brexit to Covid. The one sector to bounce back all the time very successfully has been tourism. Sometimes it can be taken for granted. Sometimes we do not take a long-term view of tourism, and as regards investment in marketing around the world we could do a lot better. We do not have too many natural resources here, but one resource we do have is people working in the tourism sector who have the céad míle fáilte, which really works. At some stage perhaps we could have the Minister in to have a debate on tourism and creating more winter tourism. Summer tourism is great, but if we could have winter tourism as well, that would be even better. There are obvious challenges with cost inflation and cost of hotel rooms. I call for an overarching debate on tourism in this House and I hope the Leader will facilitate it at some stage.