Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Question 32: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the progress on the commitment in the programme for Government to foster expansion and competition on air and sea routes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9188/05]

John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)
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One of the specific commitments in An Agreed Programme for Government between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats — June 2002 — was that we would foster expansion and competition on air and sea routes. Progress in relation to the implementation of this, and other commitments, is set out in detail in the formal annual progress reports produced by Government, the most recent of which was published in August 2004.

This area is primarily the responsibility of the Minister for Transport but I can give the following update from the tourism perspective. The number of overseas visitors to Ireland in 2004 was 6.574 million — an increase of 3.2% on the previous year. The latest capacity figures for summer 2005 air schedules indicate that capacity to the island of Ireland will increase by 16% from Britain, 38% from Europe and 17% from the United States on the 2004 levels. Tourism Ireland's tourism marketing programme for 2005 will support new route development and will be co-ordinated with the marketing activities of the air and sea carriers. There are ongoing discussions with major air carriers to encourage new route development. Tourism Ireland has expanded its access marketing programme. In terms of continental Europe, Ryanair has designated Shannon Airport as a hub for European flights, it announced six new routes from Europe to Dublin and other leading European airlines have been attracted into Ireland.

Sea access is also critical to Irish tourism and the significant investment by carriers, in recent years, in improving and updating capacity has been welcomed by the tourism industry — car business makes a significant contribution to tourism in terms of delivering high yield visitors, who generally stay longer and have a greater impact as regards regional dispersion throughout the country.

The response to last year's drop in the number of visitors travelling by sea has been to offer more attractive packages to Ireland and I am certain that the industry can only benefit from such a marketing approach.

Air and sea access was one of the areas reviewed in 2003 by the tourism policy review group. It recommended a number of specific actions that required to be implemented if we are to successfully develop the tourism industry. As outlined earlier, a number of these actions have been delivered while implementation of others is ongoing. I appointed a high level implementation group to monitor the implementation of the tourism action plan and to keep me, and the industry, informed of developments.