John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 316: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if he is satisfied with the regional balance of tourism; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19829/08]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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CSO statistics for overseas tourism for 2007 show a very positive result in terms of overseas numbers — up 3.9% to an all time high of over 8 million visitors — and revenue earnings — up almost 4.5% to €4.9 billion. As global competition intensifies and consumer preferences evolve, these results represent a very robust performance by the sector and confirm how dynamic and responsive the Irish tourism sector is. Performance to date in 2008 is so far positive. The CSO figures for the first two months of the year show over 900,000 visitors to Ireland for the period — an increase of almost 1% over 2007, which was a record year for Irish tourism. Financial instability, deteriorating exchange rates and weaker economic growth, have become features in some of our key source markets in recent times and would suggest that 2008, despite performance to date, will prove to be a very challenging year.

The home holiday market is an increasingly important component of the tourism business in Ireland particularly in terms of seasonal and regional spread. Statistics on the regional spread of tourism in 2007 will not be available until later this week but in 2006 (the latest figures available) over eighty-three per cent of holiday trips and eighty-eight per cent of holiday nights by domestic tourists were spent outside the Dublin area. This offsets, to some extent, the relative strength of Dublin in the overseas visitors market. In 2006, expenditure on domestic tourism across all regions (excluding Dublin) grew by 17% — with some regions performing better than others. Preliminary estimates for 2007 indicate that domestic expenditure has grown by a very positive 23%.

While the regions outside of Dublin earn almost 70% of all Tourism revenue (based on 2006 figures) the fact that all regions and sectors are not benefiting to the same extent from our tourism success continues to be a matter for attention from the Department and the State tourism agencies as tourism policy and programmes evolve. I am confident that the new regional tourism development boards and the strategies that they have prepared will facilitate the tourism industry to maximise its contribution to the regions to a greater extent than at present, and that the various region specific initiatives managed by Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland Ltd will further help to address this situation.