Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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339. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht his proposals to improve the conditions of workers in the tourism sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21423/25]

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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While tourism is now the policy responsibility of my colleague, Peter Burke TD, to whom statutory responsibility for the sector will transfer by Government Order in the coming weeks, this Government recognises the central importance of the tourism sector to Ireland's economy and communities. Tourism is of critical importance to the Irish economy, providing c.227,000 jobs throughout Ireland and €6 billion income to our economy in 2024.

Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development authority, has introduced a number of measures to support quality employment in the sector. As part of the drive to promote better employment practices, to showcase good employment in the tourism sector and to assist with recruitment and retention in the longer term, Fáilte Ireland has developed a wide-ranging Tourism Careers strategy to support SMEs to attract and retain talent to ensure businesses have the skills they need for success both now and into the future.

This includes the Employer Excellence Programme which has been designed to support SMEs to drive employee engagement and continuously and consistently provide a quality workplace.

The focus of the programme is to put the voice of the employee at the heart of the business, to capture their feedback around their experience of working with the business and to help employers to interpret and action this feedback to improve employment practices and drive greater levels of employee engagement.

The programme provides businesses with a suite of interventions including people management training, access to an independent employee engagement survey, one to one support from a HR expert, targeted capability building, employer certification and branding opportunities.

Now in its third year, the programme has attracted over 300 businesses to register to participate, with 2,500 supervisors and managers benefitting from upskilling in best practice People Management skills. Furthermore, 27,500 employees in the tourism sector have been positively impacted by their employer’s participation in the programme.

The programme is run in in addition to the online learning management system “LearniFI”, the tourismcareers.ie website, and the Transition Year Work Placement programme.

Fáilte Ireland launched LearniFI in 2023. Since then, the online learning platform for tourism employees has upskilled over 9,300 employees with content focused on areas most critical to business performance, including onboarding supports, people management, digital skills, and climate action.

Tourism officials continually engage with Fáilte Ireland concerning the application and outputs of all initiatives and programmes aimed at creating quality jobs and careers for this sector.