Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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Question 345: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the significant changes which have been implemented by his Department to date in 2005 in delivering the national spatial strategy; and the costs, benefits and savings that have accrued. [34079/05]

John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)
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The national spatial strategy is a 20 year strategy designed to enable every place in the country to reach its potential, no matter what its size or location. It recognises that not all regions of the country have the same role and seeks to organise and co-ordinate the different roles in a complementary way. The strategy is supported by regional planning guidelines, integrated planning frameworks, county and city development plans and strategies, all of which are aimed at extending the impact of the national spatial strategy at regional and local levels.

My Department is represented on the interdepartmental steering group, chaired by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, that oversees the implementation of the national spatial strategy. That group meets at regular intervals and reports annually, on overall progress, to the Cabinet committee on housing infrastructure and public private partnerships, in support of its objective of seeking to ensure that the national spatial strategy features centrally in the wider infrastructure delivery process.

The national spatial strategy does not require the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism to implement any significant changes and therefore the question of evaluating costs and benefits does not arise.

The September 2003 report of the tourism policy review group, New Horizons for Irish Tourism: An Agenda for Action, recognised that tourism development policy incorporates the need for a more integrated approach to tourism planning and investment. Tourism development policy is very much in line with the aims and objectives of the national spatial strategy launched in November 2002 as it identified and categorised the country's tourism zones and outlined the critical issues to be addressed for the 2000 to 2006 period, that is, regional spread, seasonality, infrastructural bottlenecks, sustainability, congestion, customer service and quality management. The tourism product development measure, funded through the regional operational programmes, is administered by Fáilte Ireland.

Looking to the future, the tourism policy review group agreed that tourism represents one of the strongest means by which balanced regional development can be achieved and suggested that a fundamental objective of tourism policy must be to facilitate each tourist region in achieving its full potential for tourism development in a way that maintains and enhances the sustainability of its tourism base. It pointed out that this would mean different rates of tourism growth in different areas of the country and set a target of doubling the number of overseas visitors staying at least one night in the BMW region by 2012.

The provision of funding the sport and recreational facilities sub-measure of the regional operational programmes is being considered in the context of the 2006 budget discussions. The prioritisation of locations to be funded under such a sub-measure would be undertaken in the context of the national spatial strategy.

I am hopeful, in the context of the new national development plan, of putting in place a successor to the current ACCESS scheme, which dates from 2001, for developing arts and cultural infrastructure. While the parameters of the new scheme have yet to be finalised, it is expected that it would focus on the enhancement and maintenance requirements of the current stock of facilities, while not entirely excluding new facilities. The national spatial strategy is one of the policy documents that will feed into the framework of any new scheme.