Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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370. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the amount Discover Ireland has paid for advertisements on a platform (details supplied) in the past 12 months; if there is any oversight or control over which websites the advertisements are seen on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33744/25]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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In the last 12 months, from June 2024 to May 2025, Fáilte Ireland has spent €493,207 (including VAT) on Google ads as part of its marketing activity to drive domestic tourism activity in Ireland across the year.

This activity relates to PPC (Pay Per Click) and YouTube activity only. All YouTube activity ran on YouTube.com.

Brand Safeguards:

Through its media buying agency, Fáilte Ireland has in place a number of safeguards that are implemented to protect position/placement of brand ads:

• The agency is IAB Brand Safety Gold Standard certified, a certificate to verify every step possible is being taken to serve ads in brand safe and suitable environments.
• An independent third-party TAG audit of brand safety settings is completed each year and the agency has been certified in reaching the optimum levels to prevent any brand safety issues arising.
• Negative contextual settings around numerous unsafe segments such as violence, piracy, extremism etc. are in place on Fáilte Ireland campaigns.
• Thousands of negative keywords are excluded on Fáilte Ireland’s PPC campaigns.
• Inclusion lists based on channel/market etc. and global exclusion lists are in place for campaigns and are updated regularly.
• Internal audit of publishers completed regularly by the agency to ensure minimum threshold applied on top of their own internal controls.