Good afternoon. Everyone is very welcome to our meeting.

Before we proceed, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. I wish to explain to the witnesses some limitations of parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references they make to other persons in their evidence. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I advise members of the constitutional requirements that members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate when they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, a member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any members partaking via Microsoft Teams that, prior to making their contribution to the meeting, they confirm they are on the Leinster House campus.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

This is our discussion on matters concerning the tourism industry in Ireland. Tourism is newly within the remit of this committee and we would like to hear the perspectives of the tourism industry in Ireland. As we consider tourism policy, this will be our first meeting on tourism where we hope to discuss a range of matters concerning the tourism industry in Ireland, such as hotel development in terms of obstacles to construction and the opening of new hotels, a matter that has been raised by our Leas-Chathaoirleach and other members, and the barriers to stimulating growth in the sector. We also want to discuss other related matters. The committee will also welcome views on the general scheme of the short-term letting and tourism Bill, as well as competitiveness and the cost of doing business in Ireland.

I suggest we allow our witnesses to speak for up to ten minutes. We will then revert to members to speak for up to seven minutes for questions and answers. Members may have a second round of questions if time permits. Members will be called as they appear on the week 3 speaking rota, which was circulated. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I am delighted to welcome our witnesses. From the Irish Hotels Federation, I welcome the president, Mr. Michael Magner. We also welcome its chief executive, Mr. Paul Gallagher. He is no stranger to Leinster House, as he was only across the road for many years. They are both very welcome. I propose we publish the opening statements and submissions provided by witnesses on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I now invite Mr. Magner to make his opening statement.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and wish everybody a good afternoon. On behalf of the Irish Hotels Federation, I thank the committee for the opportunity to address it today. As the largest and most regionally dispersed indigenous employer in Ireland, tourism and hospitality is a key cornerstone of our nation's economic prosperity and supports over 270,000 livelihoods, which represents one in every ten jobs across our country. Approximately 70% of tourism jobs are located outside the capital, Dublin, and 69,000 people are employed directly in hotels and guest houses - our profession.

Tourism makes an enormous contribution to economic diversification and rural development, generating more than €10 billion in revenues annually and more than €2.9 billion in taxes for the Exchequer. In addition to providing local employment, our hotels and guest houses buy local services, source locally produced food and provide an essential economic infrastructure in support of local business and the communities in which we operate.

This does not come about by accident. Government policy is a determining factor in our success, as is the outstanding support provided by our tourism agencies, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland. Their work driving tourism development, supporting businesses and promoting and marketing Ireland has been instrumental in building and maintaining Ireland’s reputation as a world-class destination.

Looking ahead, we are confident that tourism can continue to grow, provided it remains central to Government policy decision-making. This is why, for example, the Government’s recent decision to reduce the rate of VAT on food services in the budget is a welcome and timely intervention. It will offer much-needed relief to struggling food service businesses the length and breadth of the country in the face of serious cost challenges, particularly given their labour-intensive nature.

Cost challenges within the Irish economy are, of course, a serious concern for the entire industry in Ireland. We are currently one of the most expensive places in Europe in which to live and do business. Relentless increases in costs, including energy, labour, insurance, supplies and food, have placed immense pressure on our sector. These rising costs threaten both our competitiveness and the viability of hospitality businesses, undermining Ireland’s appeal as an international destination.

In addition to cost challenges, our sector is navigating difficult headwinds in the form of declining tourism revenues, economic instability in key source markets and growing international political uncertainty. As we look forward to 2026, these factors present real risks to our industry and the ability of hospitality operators to remain wholly viable. It is therefore essential that the Irish tourism and hospitality industry remains at the heart of our economic policy, ensuring the right conditions are created to support long-term, sustainable development of our industry.

In this regard, the decision earlier this year to move the tourism portfolio to a reconfigured Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment has been a welcome development, bringing greater economic focus and a more coherent and co-ordinated approach to policy planning for our sector. Among our policy priorities, the Irish Hotels Federation see the following as key to ensuring tourism lives up to its full potential: measures to improve cost competitiveness within the economy; increased investment in tourism training, skills and development; leveraging untapped surpluses available through the National Training Fund; increased investment in tourism marketing and development; targeted funding for a national hotel retrofitting scheme to reduce carbon footprint; removal of barriers to growth in air access to Dublin Airport and securing additional opportunities to enhance regional air access and connectivity; assisting hotels to develop employer-led staff accommodation along with effective regulation of short-term lettings, including the planned Fáilte Ireland register; and, finally, measures to support tourism capacity growth, including the removal of barriers to hotel development.

Tourism is central to our country’s economic and social well-being. As Ireland looks to strengthen competitiveness, productivity and sustainability across our enterprise base, our tourism and hospitality sector stands ready to play its role as a major engine of economic prosperity. We look forward to further engagement with the committee on these important issues today and into the future.

Before we proceed, does Mr. Gallagher wish to say anything?

I think Mr. Magner has covered it all. We are happy to spend time engaging with members.

Before we go to members, it is significant that tourism has come back under the Department of enterprise, as was referred to in the opening statement. There is huge level of interest from members of the committee. With regard to the business of the committee so far, we have been busy with legislation. I hope the body of work we do here will be helpful to our work on competitiveness. In the new year, I hope we will get an opportunity to engage with other bodies such as the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation and its CEO, Eoghan O'Mara Walsh. I appreciate the witnesses being here.

I thank Mr. Gallagher, and I thank Mr. Magner for his opening statement. Tourism is a vital part of our economy. The number of people working in it and the contribution it makes to the Central Fund through the taxes collected is huge and does not go unnoticed. The elephant in the room is the pricing and hotel prices around the country. A dynamic pricing system for rooms is used, especially when we have events in Ireland like concerts, all-Ireland finals or whatever. In some cases, it is cheaper to go to Barcelona for a weekend. Included in that is the flights, food and the concert. It would be cheaper than staying a couple of nights in Dublin and going to a concert. I know the witnesses will tell me that the average price is quite low, but that is not the perception. Why are hotel prices so high in Dublin, especially when there are events on in the area?

The price of hotel rooms fluctuates all year, from very low prices early in the year during quiet periods to higher prices on high-demand nights. Fáilte Ireland did a review of all this in 2023, independently of Fáilte Ireland, and found that on compression nights where occupancy is above 85%, the average price of a hotel room grew by approximately 26% or 27%.

That might be 2023. My experience of being in Dáil Éireann for the past 12 months and looking for hotel rooms on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, which are not the most popular nights to be looking for a room, is that there are no cheap nights. There are no nights where they are going below that, or very few.

We would welcome Fáilte Ireland doing another evaluation of the market. It would also demonstrate the point I am making, which is that, by and large, for the majority of people booking hotels in Dublin or any other part of Ireland where there is peak demand, if they book early enough, they will get the best value. However, there is still good value to be had, even on compression nights in places like Dublin. You may have to travel further out of the city. We do interviews week in, week out across the summer identifying the idea that there are no low-cost rooms and then go find them and prove it on radio. I have done live booking.com searches during interviews to debunk the idea that every room in Dublin is €500 or €600, which they are not. The average achieved rate for Dublin all year last year is approximately €176. I can bring data to the committee to demonstrate that by way of independent research, rather than my figures.

There are high prices for some people. There are very high prices sometimes in the middle of the city close to the events, but, equally, there are lower prices further out from the city. Paris has 160,000 bedrooms. Dublin has 24,000 bedrooms. In Paris, if you were staying five miles outside the city centre, you will still be in the city centre. In Ireland, if you stay five miles outside the city centre, people think you are still in Wicklow or something. Public transport is very good. There are lots of opportunities like Bray, Dún Laoghaire and, further out, Malahide and so on for hotels to provide good value accommodation.

Mr. Gallagher is saying that the lack of hotel rooms in Dublin is causing prices to be what they are. It is supply and demand.

That is a good correlation. If there were more hotel rooms available in Dublin, the price would moderate. There are not enough hotel rooms.

In his opening statement, Mr. Magner mentioned barriers to hotels entering the markets, or bottlenecks or hold-ups in the system. What could the Government do to make it easier for people to enter the market?

On barriers to entry for new hotel stock coming into Ireland, there is the cost of acquisition for a greenfield site. You then have to go through what is sometimes an arduous planning process. There is also the cost of development in building the hotel. Except for Dublin itself, outside of Dublin it does not make economic sense in Ireland right now to build a hotel on a greenfield site. In the property I own in Cork, I recently added hotel guest rooms to contribute to enhancing the bed stock in Cork. Even at that, looking at the cost of building those rooms, where I had kitchens and all the services in place, there was still a conversation about whether it was viable to add more guest rooms.

When you look at that, when you look at situations whereby you pay for planning applications, which are calculated on the size of the asset that you might be looking to build, assuming that you secure planning permission, there is then a large development contribution required. In my case, it was €250,000. For what? I did not understand what it was for. I paid for the planning application. I paid the commercial rates that apply to my business. That it is what it is. What was that money being used for? That €250,000 had to be factored in. When you look at potentially building a hotel, a 100- or 200-bedroom property, which is what you might need to look at in terms of meeting the demand that exists, you would say that the cost could be many millions. For some, that is simply not viable. You are going to see down the line that instead of the traditional type of hotel guestroom that you walk into, with an en suite and bedroom, a room for a large double bed with lockers either side and a desk to work at, the only way hotel rooms will be viable in the future, particularly in Dublin, will be with a city sleeper approach, with the bed pushed right against the wall. In fact, two bedrooms might be built in a space that would traditionally contain one. Those are significant barriers to entry in terms of providing for the demand that is there.

As already stated, the work that Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland do to promote the island of Ireland, not just nationally but internationally, is having an impact on the visitor numbers coming in. We must be able to meet that demand. The economic circumstances must be created to allow that to be successful.

Tourism numbers are down this year. What does Mr. Magner think are the main reasons for that?

There is a cost-of-living crisis not just in Ireland but around the world. When you look at Ireland when it attracts visitor numbers to the country, you look at North America and the United States. Those countries have not been immune to cost-of-living pressures, and there is no doubt but that they are a factor. Overall, the year will be flat. We see from our own data, and I am sure Mr. Gallagher will also attest to this, that visitor numbers are looking more or less on a par with last year. It had previously been reported that there was a drop. There was a reorganising and re-understanding of the data. When you look at it across the entire year, visitor numbers should be on a par. We must be mindful that when we promote Ireland, we are looking at North America and our nearest neighbour, the UK. We have to look at other international markets to draw in international visitors, and the whole notion of the diaspora link. We must understand that we cannot always be focusing on the diaspora and the connection between, for example, North America and Ireland as a way of attracting tourists to the country in the future. We have to be more creative about inviting visitors from other countries in the world.

I welcome both witnesses and thank them for their statements. Coming from Mayo, I obviously have concerns about the drop in numbers. I know Mr. Magner said the numbers are likely to be flat rather than deteriorating, but any deterioration, or indeed flatness, for the regional hotels and the staff they employ would concern me. We need to be ahead of the curve.

I want to home in on the request for increased investment for tourism training skills and development and the National Training Fund. Have the witnesses approached the Government to specifically ask for a cut of the National Training Fund to do the training? It is very obvious to me. We used to have the Council for Education, Recruitment and Training, CERT, and all the different training programmes, etc., which worked really well. I worked in hotels in Achill and other places from the age of 15. I do not see the same training there now. What response are the witnesses getting and what can we, as a committee, do to ensure they get it so they can train staff? It is also important to the career development of the staff as well as the productivity they add for hotels.

Earlier this year, there was a rumour that the National Training Fund was going to be subvented and sent to universities for capital project development. We wrote to the Minister for further and higher education to say that was outrageous and was not the purpose for which employers had been paying into the fund. We stated that the fund needed to be deployed for exactly the areas that we all advocate, which is where we have needs. In our specific sector, apprenticeships and their funding are huge areas for us, particularly for chefs because there are no other apprenticeship programmes in hospitality. We are not funded on a like-for-like basis with other trades, such as plumbing and electrical. Employers in our sector disproportionately must pay more to put employees through apprenticeship programmes. The Irish Hotels Federation has a very successful apprenticeship programme. We have 120 commis chefs in training right now. We have had approximately 600 over the past four years. They are all going into the hotels and restaurants around Ireland.

Where we have a difficulty, beyond that, is in respect of further apprenticeship courses for higher qualifications in kitchens. There is a requirement for a sous-chef programme. We believe there is good appetite and we could fill and resource such a programme if we had a funding model that would allow us to activate that kind of demand among the industry. Quite honestly, we have to go around knocking on doors of kitchens. We have one guy full time on the road going into kitchens and asking head chefs if they believe that someone who is cleaning dishes in the kitchen has the skill set, temperament and outlook such that they would like to upskill and would head chefs put that person on a course. If they say yes, we will help to activate course access for that individual and try to keep him or her in the business. We have had a lot of success doing that.

We have obviously lost CERT. We had a real training house for hospitality but it is totally gone. There really is-----

Could that be brought back again?

There is no appetite among the key players or stakeholders to do such a thing. We feel there are many kitchens and facilities in Ireland that are now lying empty. Colleges have no interest in opening those facilities. There is a little bit of a difficulty in Ireland where there is a rush to have level 7 and level 8 qualifications in everything. The question must be asked: who is going to cook our food in the future if everybody is going to be an engineer, scientist or accountant? We need lots of types of people in the industry in lots of careers at lots of levels. There is a bit of a bottleneck. We cannot get colleges to open closed kitchens. We cannot get the Government to fund appropriately the apprenticeship programmes to allow us to fill those kitchens. Colleges are hell-bent on going for level 7 and level 8 qualifications through three- and four-year programmes. You cannot put chefs into a three-year programme. By the time they get out, the industry will have moved on and they would want to do something else and travel.

What about shorter courses for waiting staff or other positions within hotels? Has anybody drafted what a programme for all of those training courses might look like and what intervention the Government would need to make? Those interventions might be in physical structures - and, as Mr. Gallagher said, opening facilities - or in trainers and all of that. I want to get a picture of what might work.

We have looked at paths to career progression across all of the categories of staff in hotels and restaurants. The Deputy is right that from receptionists to waiting staff, even to maintenance guys and so on, we believe there is greater appetite for more supports and training programmes. They would be a combination of on-site, off-site and online programmes. That works well for people who work a five-day week. They cannot step out of the business for five days or three months at a time to do block release, so we believe a combination of on-site and online types of training works well, with short, sharp modules that deliver real skills to build on. They are micro qualifications, so to speak. Education and training boards, ETBs, are certainly working on micro qualifications in different areas, but not in hospitality and tourism.

It is important that the Irish Hotels Federation and other key stakeholders are involved in the design of those programmes and how they might work. It would be money well spent in terms of productivity and reputation. We obviously have to reclaim that internationally. We take that for granted.

We also have a successful Skillnet. We have a Skillnet in the federation. We spend approximately €500,000 per year. It is match funding, some of which comes from the State and some from Europe. We do a variety of courses. They could be night porter safety courses. There were recent incidents of a lady being followed in a hotel lobby and up a corridor. We always look to tailor by considering what are the requirements of the industry, going forward, and how do people who now work in the industry and own hotels pass their businesses onto the next generation and so on. There is a wide range. Approximately 2,500 people are in training on various modules.

Hotels are very attractive places to work.

I really enjoyed my time in a hotel. I have a question about accommodation for staff and the problems that is posing.

We have presented a paper to the Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, on employer-led accommodation for staff as a pilot option. In many villages and towns in Ireland, when a house comes up for sale, employers in the town buy those houses. I know of a case in Ballyconnell where a house came onto the market. There are only two very large employers in Ballyconnell, one in manufacturing and the other in hospitality. They both chased that house. No citizen was able to buy that house. It was priced out of their reach. I know of other towns, such as Killarney, where Munster Joinery has about 50 houses. Clearly, businesses are interrupting or blocking private dwellings becoming available for citizens, so we believe, on a pilot basis and not just for hospitality, that the Government could decide to broaden it out. It is not unlike returning a derelict house to use. There is some form of grant aid to repurpose a non-residential building, if that is possible. If not, we would look to greenfield sites. For example, a hotel that is already serviced would have land and might build an accommodation block on it. It secures employment in the regions and helps to keep employees and attract overseas skills into those businesses. It releases accommodation stock back to citizens in those locations. It stands up on a numerical basis. However, we have yet to meet the Minister. We are meeting him on 3 December to discuss that specifically.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is nice to meet Mr. Gallagher. Hello again to Mr. Magner.

I am from the lovely County Meath. There has been great investment in hotels in my area. Bellinter House has just put in a brand new spa. I was at its launch last week. It is incredible. Mr. Noel Moran has done a lot at Bective Stud. The Cusack Hotel Group has recently done up the Ardboyne and Newgrange hotels. They look sensational. We are lucky that we have the Knightsbrook Hotel and Trim Castle Hotel in Trim. I did a search on booking.com to check out staying in Meath with two adults and two kids this weekend. If I unselected everything that was not a hotel, there were three options, varying between €460 and €984. There were only three hotels available. We struggle in County Meath with needing more accommodation. If I left it at a search for everything, there were another 22 properties, mostly short-term lets.

In one of their points about their priorities, the witnesses said they would like to see the effective regulation of short-term lettings, including the planned Fáilte Ireland register. Would they mind explaining how that would benefit them? I know that, going to a wedding in Monaghan or down the country, short-term lets work very well. When there is not enough room in the hotels, people go out to the short-term lets and stay there. How do the witnesses feel the new regulation that we are working through at the moment will help the sector?

Similar to Deputy Tony McCormack, I have a question about the barriers. We had Maxi Zoo here a couple of weeks ago, which has 26 stores but will not be investing in any more for now because the cost of building a Maxi Zoo store is too high. For the witnesses, I think cost and planning regulations are the two main things, but if there is anything else to elaborate on, let me know.

There were a few words in the presentation about insurance, which is something that I never talk about, so I thought I would bring it up today. How many insurance underwriters do the federation's members have a choice of going to on average? Are they looking at or engaging in group schemes? Is that a challenge for their members?

On short-term lets, I watched some of the interaction last week between the committee and the representatives who came to speak. I think Threshold was here. We think it is a good idea for people to know what is being sold, so I think the short-term register is a good idea. We would not want hotels to be built and for nobody to know where they were, so why would we have a whole load of other tourism accommodation stock that existed but we could not count? It is not that we would want to limit it at all. It is entirely up to the Government to decide how it wants to make these businesses compliant, whether from the perspective of planning, fire safety, health or so on. We believe it is important that we be able to count the number of businesses that are operating and attracting overseas visitors and to see what the size of that industry is, because the size might frighten us. We usually underestimate how many there are or how many overseas visitors they are minding. Maybe we need to do more appropriate training for some people who operate some of these businesses, where they are interacting with tourists, too.

It is not about going after them and making them close down. We simply do not think that would be logical. I have to say that some places do offer unfair competition. I have hoteliers in small towns and villages with populations of a couple of hundred who find it hard to fill their businesses and their own rooms.

I respect that Mr. Gallagher is saying that. I wondered if he would say that.

You have to acknowledge that there must be some unfair competition with it, but that is not the motivation for the register. We know more about the size of the national herd than anything else. This is a glaring hole in our understanding of the product we offer.

On barriers, the other element is what Deputy Conway-Walsh referenced about the labour resource and attracting key, qualified labour. There is a body of work that we need to be mindful of. Maybe we are guilty of it as well as operators of hotels and guest houses, but we keep referring to our hotel and guest house industry as an industry. We are no longer that. We are a profession. We need to look at the area in which we operate and start recognising the professions in the places that we work, including hotels, guest houses and tourism. With that, maybe there is an opportunity for the Government to do awareness campaigns. When you look at second level schools and career guidance counsellors, you often look at the prospectus. When I go back to my own day, the prospectus was gathering dust at the top of a room in a career guidance counsellor's office, then it was handed to me and I was told to read it myself. There is a bit around that that we are all responsible for, namely, to make sure the tourism and hospitality profession protects those 270,000 livelihoods and rooms, because I cannot reposition my hotel in the morning if something goes bad. I cannot go to a lower cost economy or to where regulation is not as robust as it is here. We need to be mindful of that. That is potentially a barrier to reputational recognition for our profession.

The previous Government, in its programme for Government, recognised that there was an issue with insurance and set out a number of points for the reorganising of the insurance industry in Ireland. Some of that work is done and it is welcome. There is still significant work to be done and significant barriers. We hear from members continuously who go to renew either their property insurance or their combined liability, public and employer's liability insurance only to find that the market is still wholly inelastic. There might be two or three providers willing to quote, while others will just not write into the market because they do not see it as a fair return for the insurer. That is still a significant challenge. The Irish Hotels Federation has an insurance committee and we are members of the Alliance for Insurance Reform, which we play an active part in. The Irish Hotels Federation and our insurance committee are just about to move forward with an insurance scheme for our members. We have been working on this diligently over the past three years. It has taken that time to actually get to a landing point, so we can now potentially package a scheme that would be somewhat attractive for our members.

What difference does that make to the federation's members?

We do not know until the scheme runs off. It has to have the power of the purchase insofar as it has to be a collective of our members coming together.

I doubt the Irish Hotels Federation has an ESB or electricity committee. Is it not a pity that it has to have one for insurance? What does it call it? An insurance committee?

Yes.

That is what the federation had to do.

Correct. It is a huge challenge. I just renewed my property insurance for my hotel last week. Thankfully, it has remained static, but then there are moving parts, so I have had to take a higher excess. If, God forbid, I have an issue with a flood or something like that, I will have to take a higher excess on my insurance this year in order to pay the same premium that I paid last year. That makes no sense whatsoever in a market where we are a small country. When you look at Ireland compared with the United Kingdom and other parts of the world where insurance is not an issue, we see it as a profit and loss item in our business and it has to be treated that way. The cost is so significant.

I welcome the witnesses. Sometimes, I feel I should be sitting beside them rather than here.

I cannot overemphasise what the hotel and hospitality industry means to Ireland, especially rural Ireland. The simplest way to try to define what a hotel means is that we only appreciate one when it is lost from a town. It gives employment 365 days of the year and it helps suppliers. It is the heart and soul.

I am from Gorey, which is one of the busiest towns in Ireland. I have no doubt that the success of Gorey is due to the hotels. I have looked at the statistics. Some 1,700 people arrive in Gorey for a weekend if the hotel and accommodation sector is full. For 1,700 people to walk into the main street of any town in a holiday mood is important. The domestic market is important. We cannot underestimate its impact. There was a young girl living in Gorey who was very weak in her social skills. Her father sent her to one of the local hotels. I met that girl last week when I went in for a cup of tea, and she was absolutely transformed. You cannot put a price on putting young people into the hospitality industry.

My fear is the closing down or re-use of hotels, mainly in rural Ireland. I think of the hotels we have lost to the IPAS system or the ones that closed during the crash. What are the chances of getting someone to build a hotel now? There are plans for Courtown. Courtown was a boom town when I was growing up, but it is now on its knees. A guy has a planning application in, but I fear he may not go ahead because of the obstacles and the cost of building. Is there a return on the investment? The fact that he is local is a huge help. He has a passion to make sure the town comes back to its greatness. There is a plan for another hotel in Gorey, which makes commercial sense, but I am thinking about smaller areas like Courtown. Wicklow town, which is outside my area, has lost its hotel. I was in the Arklow Bay Hotel. It was not only a hotel; it was a community centre, and everything went on there.

I am concerned about what happens when we lose a hotel. I am trying to get a feel of what incentives we, as a Government, need to put in place to try to get building hotels again. As I have been saying for the last two minutes, it is not just a structure. It is not a factory that we are building. It is part of the social fabric of every town and village. We only realise how important they are when they are gone.

The Deputy makes some very interesting points. We have been advocating all the time that, between retail and hospitality, we are the largest employer of first-time workers in the economy. Be it as a waitress or bar boy, your first job in hospitality or retail is where you learn your first skills. I fully appreciate the Deputy’s example of that young girl. The kind of skill sets that we can give people are tremendous and will stand to them for the rest of their lives.

The difficulty with hotel development is that it is cheaper to buy an existing hotel than build a new one. In the Deputy’s constituency, I know a hotelier who had a planning application in. He got the planning after about two years, having spent €400,000 going through the process, only to discover at the other end that it was no longer viable to build the hotel that he had planning for. Therefore, the hotel was not built, but he had spent €400,000 doing it.

We think there are things that could be done. Certainly, to have hotels disappearing from the system to house international protection applicants or others is detrimental long-term for the industry. A hotel bedroom has never been designed as a place to live in. It is somewhere for people to stay on a short-term basis. There is a bit of unwinding by the Government in relation to the number of hotels it has taken, from about 12% of our hotel stock to 7% now, and it will unwind further. The difficulty, of course, is that those hotels will come back out at the other end in a fairly poor state of repair. The question is whether they will close, or whether they will be bought and someone else will renovate them.

For us, the clear problems with hotel development throughout Ireland are the planning and regulatory supports. We need a better streamlined planning process that moves things more quickly through planning. These are strategic projects; they should be seen as strategic. They underpin local economies, towns and villages. We need targeted financial assistance for low-cost access to finance or tax concessions. We are not saying there should be double-tax allowances, but there could perhaps be VAT holidays on construction costs in order to bring hotels into the pipeline.

I have spoken about the balanced use of hotel stock, which means the Government should try to exit as quickly as possible from where it has intervened in the market. Clearly, it has intervened at the two-star and three-star level, not at four-star and five-star. The removal of two-star and three-star has greatly damaged the number of European visitors from the UK, Germany and France, who tend to go for two-star and three-star because there is a lower price point - they might do hill walking and so on. We have lost a huge amount of that stay and pull factor from overseas continental Europe.

The last point is about investing in better facilities and regional investment, prioritising infrastructural development and the public realm to make tourism more “sticky”. When we talk of sticky tourism, we mean that if you go somewhere, what would keep you there for longer? It is attractions, facilities, the public realm and things to do. If we can improve all of those particular elements of a tourism stay in a town, village or city, it means tourists stay longer. The longer they stay, the less carbon footprint they will have. Having come here, they will stay in a region for longer, which is where we want them, not in the cities, which are already too busy.

Clearly, there is a combination of levers that we believe the Government could implement that would help to promote not just hotel development, but official, registered tourism development.

I will add to Mr. Gallagher's point. Back in the day, when a lot of hotels were built in Ireland in the 1980s, there was the Industrial Credit Corporation, ICC, which was a bank designed to support businesses. When we look at rural Ireland, and the reference made by Deputy Brennan, most of the hotels or operators in rural Ireland are independent and owner-operated. The Deputy made a point about a local person looking to invest. If there is no model that stands up as financially sustainable, it cannot move forward. I often think about the situation in Ireland 20 years ago, when people could only get a ten-year or 12-year mortgage. They can now get a 30-year mortgage. Why are hotels, which are bricks and mortar in the core shell, not financed on a 30-year mortgage for that element of it? The fixtures and fittings, which are the renewable pieces, could be financed over 12 or 15 years, which can currently be achieved. Maybe then there would be an opportunity for hotels to be viable in those regional parts of Ireland to support the sticky tourism referenced by Mr. Gallagher.

I agree. In studying all of this lately, I put in a parliamentary question on 15 May. Fáilte Ireland could not tell me how many hotels were built in rural Ireland. It could tell me how many were registered, but the one in Arklow is 100 years old and was re-registering. The problem is not highlighted enough. This needs to be done. We need to know the statistics.

To be fair, Fáilte Ireland has better insights now. I will share a report with the Deputy. It tracks planning applications for hotels under construction, hotels exiting and so on. It does try to get a global picture. Obviously, hotels move very slowly through the planning cycle, so it is never a moment in time, and it cannot really define how many hotels are about to open. It is a little tricky. However, it does have some data that I can share with the committee.

I again welcome the witnesses and thank them for the opening statement. There is one issue that I want to dive into. We know from the Central Statistics Office information that there was a 7.5% year-on-year decline in the numbers in 2024. I would like to get an insight into what is happening. One question involves a very high-profile situation, which is the passenger cap at Dublin Airport. There is something I often find interesting when speaking to hoteliers outside of the greater Dublin area, whether they are in Donegal, Killarney or east Cork, and there is a huge selection of hotels at different price ranges in the east Cork area. The issue is the volume of international passenger traffic that comes through Dublin, whether people are travelling by coach tour, private chauffeur driver or in the number of other ways that they get to different parts of the country.

Dublin is the preferred arrival destination for international visitors. That is generally because of how small the country is, from my discussions with hotel managers and other people in the industry, and how people like to visit more than one location on their travels here. The passenger cap situation is also ongoing. Does the federation have a view on that? I will come to my second point in a moment.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. There were two questions there. One was on the CSO and the other on Dublin Airport. All year we have been clarifying our view that last year's CSO data is incorrect. To reflect now, we are seeing large declines in overseas arrivals across the first five months of this year. We believe there was some issue with the counting of overseas visitors departing Ireland last year and to rectify that, that is revealing now a sharp decline in overseas visitors this year. We have other data sources aside from our own occupancy reports. Airbnb provides data, though we cannot disclose it obviously, and there are airports, ports and so on. There are lots of other metrics that can be used to inform on visitor numbers. I am very thankful to the CSO, which we have been meeting every month. Tomorrow at 11 a.m. it will issue figures and we will have a meeting tomorrow with it to be taken through those. The CSO does not agree with our view it was wrong last year and that is fine. It is the CSO, it the official government body and it is not going to concede we believe it is wrong and that therefore it is. So far we would say the industry has had a relatively flat year this year, that overseas arrival numbers are consistent with 2023's numbers, that 2024 was well overstated and that we were not seeing the high numbers the CSO was claiming arrived last year. There are other metrics, of course. There are the I-92 and I-91 from the Department of Homeland Security. You cannot get into the United States unless you pass through its channel. It has returning numbers of US visitors into the States higher this year than the CSO was reporting were leaving Ireland to go to the States, and that simply cannot be possible. People did not join the flight mid-air somewhere over the Atlantic. They got on at Dublin and got off in the States. They were counted and we believe the count on the American side was correct and the one on our side was wrong.

On the cap at Dublin Airport, there was a winter cap last year but there is no summer cap at the moment. Currently, the cap is not in situ. Although there is a cap at €32 million, it is not being applied at Dublin. The difficulty with a cap at Dublin Airport is that airlines make decisions about where they place their assets. If I have a load of aircraft, I am going to put them where they will get most use to give me the best return possible. Anything that would create uncertainty about planning routes into the future would make an airline think it should not put one into Dublin but into Madrid or Barcelona instead and go transatlantic from Barcelona. Anything that causes uncertainty to air access is a problem. There is a possibility that if we were to go around capping airlines that will arrive here - because we are going to cap the number of arrivals - we may find reciprocal caps on the other side. US airports might decide to cap outbound or inbound Irish aircraft coming through Dublin as a reciprocal cap if we were to go down the road of applying the 32 million passenger cap. Clearly something will have to be found to remedy the issue whereby we have a strategic asset that provides 85% of all air access into Ireland and has its hand tied behind its back because of a planning cap of 32 million visitors. Really we should be able to find a more quick, agile solution to that, take it away from Fingal County Council and find some other statutory instrument that would allow Dublin Airport to grow and expand, as any international airport must do to underpin tourism. As a country and an island, we really cannot afford to mess around too much with international air access because they are certainly not going to come by boat, ferry or cruise. It is going to be the lifeblood of access for Irish tourism. We are heavily dependent on North America and it is important we do not interrupt or cause uncertainty to the supply of visitors.

I thank Mr. Gallagher. That is very insightful.

The responsibility for tourism has shifted from what was the Department of arts, media, culture and tourism to the Department of enterprise. How has that transition gone in the view of the federation? Are the witnesses fully content the Department's internal infrastructure is set up and are they satisfied the relevant officials are in place? I ask that question because the committee will, I hope, be doing an informal meeting with the Department and the Minister in the new year and getting the insight of the witnesses' industry is important to us.

We welcome the move to the Department of enterprise and employment. It is a natural fit for the tourism industry because of the 270,000 jobs in the sector. It makes absolute sense for that to be within an enterprise portfolio. It is a process. The Department has only been in existence since the formation of the current Government but as we have started that process, it has been very engaging and positive. We see there is a real opportunity to have two-way communication with the Department. We have a Minister in situ who understands the opportunities and challenges the profession presents. From that perspective, we are positive about the relationship that exists. As president of the Irish Hotels Federation, I have had very positive engagement not just with the Minister but with Department officials as well. There is an eagerness to understand what tourism and hospitality mean to the economy and their importance to the Exchequer, culture, society and the general future of Ireland.

Mr. Gallagher may want to circle that out.

Mr. Magner is quite right. We now have a Minister who is an accountant as well. When you are in a business Department, you have to be very businesslike, so bringing solutions and not just bringing problems is something we are focused on all the time. We are meeting the Minister on 3 December. We are very pleased to be in this Department. It is appropriate, as one of the large employers, that we are in the Department in charge of employment. Heretofore, sometimes tourism Ministers have referred to the tourism budget as the sort of money you find behind a radiator in the Department of Finance. Clearly that does not say very nice things about our sector. We are far more serious and significant than that, with nearly €3 billion in tax returns to the Exchequer. This is a serious business with very expensive assets. Hotels, airlines and everybody else who makes up this family of hospitality and tourism are serious players and being in a serious Department is very important.

I thank Mr. Magner and Mr. Gallagher for the information. That concludes the time I am allowed. The next slot is in the name of Deputy Clendennen.

I thank the Chair and thank Mr. Magner and Mr. Gallagher for joining us. As a graduate of Shannon College of Hotel Management and having worked both at home and overseas in the hotel sector, I have a fondness for it, and I come from a family hospitality business. To pick up on what Deputy Brennan mentioned, the importance and significance of a hotel in a small village or rural town and the difference it can make on so many different levels cannot be underestimated.

Mr. Magner touched in his opening statement on the area of measuring improvements and improving cost competitiveness within the economy. There has been a lot of debate in recent times about Dublin hotels and pricing. Only last week, we saw this with airlines, where tickets are €50 today and €500 tomorrow because there is an event. I understand dynamic pricing, how it works and the fact it is open to the market and consumers, but if we look at the recent investment by the State in NFL events in Dublin, hotel rooms that are €300 tonight were €1,500 that night. That is five times the rate. I appreciate it is an open market but does the federation think there is reputational damage for all of Ireland's hospitality and hotel sector when we are here having a discussion about State supports?

There is definitely a conversation in Ireland about hotels.

When we look outside of Ireland and at international visitors coming into the country, that does not bear the same sentiment. Of course, in my business, I have a significant number of international visitors and they put forward the proposition that Ireland is actually very good value. They say it offers an experience for them that they may not be able to have in their own countries at the same value perspective. Maybe sometimes we are bad about telling the story of the cost of running a business. The cost of running my own hotel has increased by over 40% since 2020. Prices in my business have increased as well, but nowhere near 40%. There is a challenge then to try to ensure my business is nimble and more sustainable in future. This is something that is a challenge for the majority of our members when we look outside large urban areas.

I take the point made about the NFL, but we have to be mindful that there are approximately 22,000 rooms in Dublin, and when we multiply those by 365 nights of the year, many of those hotels have already contracted out their business for next year. In my hotel, I have 60% of my business already on my books, so when we get dates announced and where the demand exceeds supply, and Mr. Gallagher referenced this point too, the compression of nights can lead to a narrative that sometimes prices are not what the public are willing to pay. Again, it is about trying to tell that story in an environment where it can sometimes be very difficult to challenge because price is a problem for everybody. I have a grievance where I go on holiday at Easter and I have to pay more for my airline seat. If my kids are in school, then my airline seat costs much less. Unfortunately, the demand at Easter is an awful lot higher and this, unfortunately, is the situation we find ourselves in. To circle back, when we look outside of Ireland and the international perception there of Ireland, it is really positive. Ireland is seen as a country with good value and genuine, immersive and memorable experiences for the international visitor coming to this country, which is a positive.

In relation to the retrofit scheme and how it could potentially work, have any calculations been done on what sort of a fund it is reckoned this would cost?

We have not really. We are working very closely with the SEAI, and we had a conference two weeks ago where its representatives spoke. For hotels, a lot of the issues around retrofitting are around the funding of it and how we draw down working capital to advance it.

Is it more of a case of access to finance?

The SBCI funding is 80% Government-backed through pillar banks. There have been some issues with pillar banks allowing hotels to access that funding unless they fix other things that maybe the bank would like them to do first, such as pay down an overdraft or rightsize other debt. We would have concerns about whether the SBCI funding was really accessible for hotels. Much work has taken place. We did a bit of research in the last couple of weeks. Most hotels are looking to invest around €160,000 each in sustainability initiatives over the next year or so. This will be across a range of things, including solar, lighting, waste management, heat controls, heat pumps and so on. There is very little thermal retrofitting of hotels, obviously, because it is incredibly difficult to do. That is not something we are going to manage at the moment. That is all legislated for in new builds in terms of design, however. The problem is we do not have enough new builds. Funny enough, older hotels - and I used to run Buswells - are actually better built than some of the hotel stock built in the 1960s, believe it or not. I know the Government is retrofitting a lot of its own public buildings. Taking down old ceilings, though, is not a good idea, nor is removing walls. In fact, most of the ceilings in Buswells were horse hair and are better insulation than modern insulation, believe it or not.

My last question is on insurance. I will be interested to hear how the new scheme goes. What are its key objectives? Is it the case that IHF members cannot get insurance or are they looking to try to get cheaper insurance? How has adequate cover been negotiated? Will the scheme be supervised through the Central Bank?

The insurance scheme is designed to allow for a group purchase by individual hotels, with them all coming together at their renewal into a specific scheme with one underwriter. This is the whole idea. That creates efficiency for hotels when they are going for renewals. We found the insurers have a sort of a toe-in-the-water appetite with us. It is a question of whether we can get enough hotels to come into the scheme to make it worth the while of the insurer to offer better terms. We believe we will. Fifty hotels have already provided very detailed information about their requirements, claims history and management. They are ready to get through the gate on it. We will be launching that over the next three to four weeks and into January. We hope, then, that those hotels will be the showcase for the rest of the industry when it comes to renewal and looking at joining this scheme.

There are some issues with some types of insurance in Ireland. This can be the case with older hotels, particularly heritage hotels, made of brick and timber and not concrete and steel. Ecclesiastical out of London is really the only insurer that is going to cover that type of construction, so sometimes the construction types can impact the availability of insurance in the market here. Overall, there have been some cases of lower insurance premium renewals. Mr. Magner discussed his, which is kind of flat, but he is going to take a higher excess. I was talking to a hotelier recently, though, who had a 51% reduction. The other beauty of the scheme is that it will provide a further training and management toolkit to manage better claim outcomes. Better health and safety, better safety statements and better training all impact insurance renewals.

Is this a current insurance provider in the Irish market?

It is.

I thank Mr. Gallagher.

I thank the Deputy. There is a vote in the Seanad, so the Senators have briefly left but they will return. I call Deputy George Lawlor.

I thank Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Magner for their excellent contributions and for coming before us. I come from County Wexford, the same as my learned friend from north Wexford, but he is half Wicklow now as well, so we have to be cognisant of that. Tourism is obviously hugely important to the entire county of Wexford, with some of our fabulous towns and beaches. People tend to see Wexford as a destination holiday county. Wonderful work is done by Visit Wexford in alliance with many of the hotels in the area.

We have a lot of family-run and family-owned hotels in Wexford. In recent times, a couple of major hotels have gone from being franchise hotels to being family-run hotels. Whites of Wexford, formerly a Clayton hotel, is now back in family hands, as is the Newtown Park Hotel, formerly a Maldron hotel. Reference was made to a hotel regarding planning, and it is one in Wexford town. The disgraceful actions of An Bord Pleanála in that case were subsequently overturned by the courts. By the time the process had gone through all that, though, I think the costs had gone from approximately €25 million to €45 million. This made everything totally unviable. It was really an awful period in terms of planning. Wexford County Council had granted planning permission and an individual then took it to An Bord Pleanála. It dragged it out for a number of years and did so much damage in that context.

This is the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. In the context of our remit on employment, I appreciate Mr. Magner's comments in relation to the two-way communications he has with the Department. He spoke about reputational recognition of professions and careers. I ask for his commentary on a matter. As he knows, we have the joint labour committees, JLCs. These were re-established by the former Minister, Richard Bruton. He decided to reintroduce a JLC for the hotel sector. I think it was over ten years ago now. Will Mr. Magner comment on the long-standing refusal of the Irish Hotels Federation to co-operate in processing the appointment of an employers' representative to sit on a joint labour committee for the hotel sector? Effectively, as he knows and is aware, this vetoes any decision that can be made by a JLC. I listened with interest as he commented about the two-way communication. It jars with me a little bit.

I tried to introduce a Bill in the Dáil. It was rejected by the Government on Second Stage. Will Mr. Gallagher comment on this veto? I am of the view that it is not conducive to good employer-employee relationships, given that there are areas within the hotel sector in which there are low pay and difficult conditions. It was Winston Churchill, believe it or not, who introduced the trade boards in 1909. They later became the joint labour committees. Winston Churchill did something to benefit Irish workers, but the Fianna Fáil party chairman and the Government refused to do it-----

We will have to get you a cigar, Deputy Lawlor.

-----in recent months. Will Mr. Gallagher comment on that effective veto and the impact he sees it having on the industry?

That is a very good question. It is also quite a difficult question. We are at liberty to take or not take the seat, and the federation has decided not to take the seat.

For what reason?

There were many things we were never very happy about. The decisions never really went our way. The chair would cast the other way. That is the lived experience. We had a lot of issues with NERA when it first came in. It was harassing hoteliers around the country. There was far too much granular focus on things that were not relevant in the inspection process. There are 46 items of legislation that govern employment in hotels and right across the economy. We believe we are well legislated for. We have an inspectorate system. They are there to visit and they do. If there are deficiencies in the findings, it is our job to make sure they are repaired.

Could that not be argued at a joint labour committee? Effectively, the Irish Hotels Federation is ignoring the process and vetoing it when the committees have worked quite effectively in the security and childcare sectors.

In the running of the joint labour committees, those services have been price-fixed. We are not open to the price-fixing of services. We already have sufficient-----

It is also about terms and conditions.

In the security and cleaning sectors, it is about parity between competitors who clean offices in order that the price for the labour content is identical.

Mr. Gallagher does not feel that would be something the hotel sector could work with, particularly in terms of the lower paid people?

We do not need to. This idea that we are a low-paid sector is incorrect. We have data from over 50% of the total workforce through a particular provider, which demonstrates that, as such, only 20% of the total workforce is on minimum wage. In many cases, they are on a minimum wage because they are lower age cohorts. In other words, first-time employees in the industry. The other 80% are on far higher wages.

Could one not argue that point at a joint labour committee?

I can do it here, so why would I need to go to a joint labour committee?

The Irish Hotels Federation is effectively vetoing a process that was established in 1909.

We are using the levers available to us. If that means there is a veto as a result of us not taking our chair, then we are opting not to take our chair. However, there is legislation coming from Europe around adequate minimum wages that will be transposed into Irish law. There are seven conditions within that, one of which relates to employees' right to collective representation. We will address all of that as it arrives into Irish law.

Does Mr. Gallagher not see the perception that the Irish Hotels Federation is effectively ignoring the process?

From the union side and the labour side, we are not going to sit. As a result, we are exercising our veto. That is clear because we have not taken our seat.

That is what the whole thing was set up for.

It was a different time. Wages across the sector have moved on an awful lot. I keep saying to people that in a resort hotel, there are nearly 46 occupations. Salaries range from minimum wage up to €250,000 if you are at the very top of the range. We employ qualified electricians, plumbers and engineers right across the sector.

Who have their own sectoral joint labour committees.

Not all them. Some of them do.

Some of them do.

Not that many are actually covered by joint labour committees. Quiet honestly, the world has moved on from joint labour committees. The lack of unionisation in hotels says something as well that employees do not believe in the need for it. There are lots of reasons things have changed. We are more modern.

Would Mr. Gallagher not agree that the message being sent out if the Irish Hotels Federation refusing to recognise joint labour committees is that workers in the hotel sector would see membership of trade unions as being frowned upon.

It is not frowned upon. I ran a hotel where some staff members were unionised and some were not. Those who were not unionised got the exact same treatment as those who were. Hence, there is no need to be in the union. It is as simple as that.

Joint labour committees had a valuable part to play, but, as an industry and a profession, we have moved forward significantly. We have our quality employer programme, which is run by the Irish Hotels Federation. That addresses areas around split shifts, for example, which were common practice back then. They are no longer part and parcel of how work is provided. In completing a thesis I did back in 2020, I looked at the relationship between workers and the hotel industry. One of the big benefits of working in our industry was that there were dynamic shifts within work so somebody could work-----

That is why I find it hard to understand the veto. I appreciate the stand the Irish Hotels Federation is taking, but I find it hard to understand.

Maybe the joint labour committees need to be revisited and maybe they need to change, with respect.

If we do not talk about it, we will never know.

That is very Churchillian of you.

Winston would be proud.

He would. Fight them on the beaches. Last but certainly not least is Deputy Gogarty.

I welcome the witnesses. In light of the questions that have already been asked, I will focus on two things. One is a demand of the Irish Hotels Federation, which is increased funding for the likes of retrofitting and anything that reduces carbon. In October, the Irish Hotels Federation had a laudable climate action conference which showed that in Ireland and the UK, the average carbon emissions is 21 kg CO2e per guest night. In hotels that have done the Fáilte Ireland climate action programme, this drops to 6 kg CO2e. There is a selling point there for environmentally conscious customers. I saw this with Airbnb hosts who appeared before us recently. Fáilte Ireland is dealing with a very narrow area. The holistic element does not come into it. There is no real data from Fáilte Ireland I could see as opposed to the wider Government context. There is a lack of joined-up thinking.

I am interested in the views of the witnesses. I was looking at a couple of case studies and one that came to mind from the SEAI page was the Ballyliffin Lodge Hotel and Spa which claims to be the most northern four-star hotel in the country. It gets the wind, rain and the cold but the hotel has an average annual occupancy of 92%. It is very busy with local weddings and international business bookings. It did energy upgrades that cost over €1 million. It put a solar array in a nearby field, a wood-chip heating system with a boiler, a building management system with heat controls and sensor LED lighting. It brought doing the laundry in house. It has made major savings - €60,000 in electric bills, €50,000 in heating bills and a 40% cut in water bills. It has more stuff planned in terms of water usage. That was funded by the new business energy upgrade scheme which offers up to €120,000 to businesses for pumps, solar, thermal, automatic controls, heat pumps, ventilation and wall insulation, etc. In that context, is Irish Hotels Federation saying the available grants are insufficient or need to be targeted more specifically for hotels?

That is a good question. There are a couple of issues. Maybe "issues" is the wrong word. They are potential barriers. In the context of accessing funding, the cost of materials has increased. Therefore, it could be a barrier to some of those operators in being able to afford the investment even though there is a derived return. The other challenge is the potential investment has to be paid for upfront. In a business that is significantly cash intensive in the operation of the business, some hoteliers or colleagues may not be in a position to write a cheque for up to €1 million in the hope that they would potentially get it back. The other point which Mr. Gallagher referenced is that access to funding is State-backed through the SBCI. It operates through the main pillar banks, namely AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB.

For hoteliers who do not have regular banking with a pillar bank, it can be very difficult to access that particular type of funding to secure the money to go-----

Like the green loan scheme.

Correct. The pillar banks use their own lending terms, conditions and criteria to advance the loan forward. They may say the applicant does not meet the criteria, even though it is State-backed up to 80%. That is a potential barrier. Then when you look for the funding through the SEAI, which is Government and European money, as I have said publicly, sometimes you would need a degree in physics to go through the application process. For some hoteliers, it is just not doable. They look at it and feel they just do not understand it.

On the long-term piece around the incentivisation of the green agenda, in terms of where we are going as a country, there are companies that will certify you as a green business. They do a really good job but they are in it for profit. When will the Government of the country put the harp on some sort of certification process, set out the criteria it is looking for and establish a Government-stamped agency that will certify companies in the green business they do? The length and breadth of the country, hoteliers and guesthouse operators are doing incredible stuff quietly and under the radar. They see the companies that are providing the green certification as being maybe not fully up to speed. We need to look at that in partnership with the likes of Fáilte Ireland.

Could there not be a Fáilte Ireland green stamp?

It would need to have the harp with it. Fáilte Ireland is the national tourism development authority. We might promote that and advocate for it, but it would need additional resources and funding to allow it to go forward with that.

I would love more time to go into that, but Mr. Magner has given a very good response.

In 2015, there were about 820 hotels in Ireland and now there are approximately 770. We do not know the precise number, but a proportion of them have been out outsourced as IPAS centres, homeless hubs and so on. In my constituency, that includes the well-known Citywest hotel and conference centre. That is a major loss of an amenity to the community in Saggart, Citywest and Rathcoole. Equally, Finnstown country house in Lucan is now a homeless hub. There are not enough homeless hubs in south Dublin. They are all full to capacity. That is a worrying issue. What is Mr. Magner's view on the repurposing of hotels as IPAS centres and emergency accommodation, given that the profitability factor and costs involved mean they are very unlikely to be reinstated as hotels? Does he feel this is a loss to communities and the profession in general?

At the time the war broke out in Ukraine, the Government reached out to everybody in Ireland to do their part. The hotel industry and profession was no different and provided accommodation for that purpose. Realistically and honestly, a hotel bedroom is not suitable accommodation for people to live in for longer than two or three weeks. It has now been three years. Our position in the industry is that hotels and guesthouses are not the right place for the provision of accommodation for any person seeking refuge from war or in circumstances where they find themselves displaced from their own country. That is not the right proposition.

As was said earlier, hotels are the lifeblood of many communities, particularly in rural and regional Ireland. They are the hub where people go to meet, celebrate, communicate and commiserate. They have all those elements. It is disappointing to see those assets go out of the industry. The other side of that is that sometimes it is simply not viable for those assets to go back into operation in the industry given the cost of doing business, particularly outside large, densely populated areas. I have seen it in north Kerry. A hotel that operated in Ballybunion, which is famous worldwide for its golfing, is gone from the town now. It will never be a proposition to bring it back to normal operations in the future because it just would not stack up. That goes to Mr. Gallagher's point earlier about developing sticky tourism propositions, whereby regional dispersal and season extension could help drive those hotels forward.

Is there scope for some sort of grant for a refit? In the model in Dublin that we talked about, we have more of the smaller rooms for people who need them for major events such as football matches, golf and so on. Could that be looked at down the line?

We have not looked at any grounds to repurpose. Hotels that have left the hotel business and are accommodating other business, which is Government business, are being paid very well. I think the industry would frown upon any scheme that would give them an additional grant at the end of their business arrangement with the Government to repair their hotels to bring them back into the system. That would be very unfair on all the hotels that have stayed out. Clearly, that would not be something we would support. They are being paid very well for the service they are providing. Therefore, they should have the resources to refit their hotels or retrofit them going out the other side.

On the size of bedrooms, we are in discussions with Fáilte Ireland around a new classification system that would allow for a much smaller footprint in a hotel. A brand-new hotel might get a higher room density per square metre - let us say 14 sq. m rather than maybe 23 or 24 sq. m - or existing hotels might be able to add on a certain block of rooms that would have a smaller dimension than all the existing bedrooms, up to a certain limit. We are looking at what the consumer wants, what the market needs and what we can afford to build, all at the same time.

In reply to some of the members' comments on price gouging, I feel that it is very small. People have to understand the hotel industry. In any provincial hotel on a Sunday night, I can almost guarantee that for 90% of the year, it will be less than 40% occupied. The head chef, Sky Sports, electrical bills and everything else still have to be paid for that day. As I said earlier, a hotel is not a factory. When there is an increase at the weekend, if the hotel is pricing on a Friday and Saturday, that is its peak and the time it has to make its margin. It is important to reiterate that.

I was concerned to hear that the CSO figures were showing visitor numbers down 7.5%. Why do they not align with the industry sources? If we are seeing a drop, I am hugely concerned by our dependency on the American market, between Trump, tariffs, the dollar and everything going on the US. I worked for the last seven years in Sri Lanka. The populations over there are just incredible. There are 1.6 billion people in India. To get a small percentage of that would be the obvious way to go. Europe would be obvious also but countries over there are going through their own economic crashes and people do not have as much money as once had to go on trips to Ireland. It is about diversification. What are Mr. Gallagher's views on that?

On dynamic pricing, the Deputy has made an interesting point. A hotel might charge €400 on a Saturday night and charge €150 on a Sunday night. That is dynamic pricing working in the opposite direction. That is a discounted hotel price on a Sunday night compared to the normal available price on a Saturday. We are not the only sector to do it, by the way. A restaurant could do an early bird menu; that is dynamic pricing. Turkey is more expensive at Christmas. An ad at 9 p.m. during the "Late Late Show" is three times the price of an ad at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Everybody seems to point fingers and say this industry is doing something very peculiar. It simply is not. This is just the way this commodity is sold.

On the second point in relation to the CSO, we shared the view earlier on that we believe, and the data that we can lean into indicates, that the CSO statistics for 2024 were inflated. The numbers it says were coming here were higher than the industry was experiencing. Therefore, this year, when the data is compared to 2024 it seems that we are having much lower numbers of overseas visitors. We are not seeing that. That is that point. We believe there is something wrong in the CSO's early data last year, from January until about July. Most of the industry is coalescing around that idea, although the CSO does not agree.

The last point was in relation to-----

It was on emerging new markets.

We could look in two ways at the fact that North America in particular is powering ahead. Is there a risk that we are over-reliant on one source? Alternatively, what magic ingredients have worked so well there that we might be able to apply them to other market sources around Europe? I am thinking of Great Britain, our largest source market, France and Germany, and then most of the rest of Europe as another cohort.

We are looking at how to activate better outcomes in the European market into Ireland and not overplay or worry about dependence on North America. We punch very high compared with most other European countries in attracting the outbound percentage of North Americans arriving into Ireland. We do incredibly well, and the reason for that is they love what we offer. They love our environment and they get a great welcome. It is a wonderful country. It is really small, so people can feel very immersed here very quickly and they all have a great time and they go home. Good news carries fast, and for 40 years or 50 years, we have been very strong on making sure we look after that particular market. Now, we need to probably redouble our efforts and show similar strengths to developing and growing the European market.

Is there any reason the CSO would exaggerate the figures?

Representatives from the CSO are not here, so I have to be very careful, as I do not want to blame them. In the early part of last year the CSO had 15 enumerators in the airports. This year there are ten. There seemed to be a lot more last year than this year. I do not know. Maybe the sample sizing was wrong, I do not know. We cannot really put our finger on it. I do not really want to pick on the CSO here. I am sure the committee could invite representatives from the CSO and I am sure they could say that I am wrong and they are right. However, we have sufficient data, and more broadly that just our own, to know that we are correct. If we were down 12% or 13% - I think it was 26% for one month this year - we would be outside screaming and shouting, and we were not.

Our members would be screaming shouting at us, and they were not. We can only work off the data and sometimes data is at odds but we stand over our data and we are confident of it.

For a plane flying into Dublin, we know exactly how many are on it. Is it not quite simple to roll out the data? It should be.

You have doubled your time allocation, so just be careful.

Okay, I thank the Chair and the witnesses.

Thank you very much for your co-operation. I found it very interesting hearing the witnesses' information. I wanted to get an insight into the issue of migration. There has been a lot of debate and discussion on asylum seekers, people coming into the country on work permits and students coming here to study English or other subjects. Many of them end up working in hospitality, given the nature of part-time employment, etc. Do the witnesses have any concerns about the impact on the industry of what Government may intend to do to clamp down on inbound migration? On the "Six One News", the Minister for justice said that Ireland's population growth is seven times higher than the average in the European Union at present. There are many different views and opinions on it, but as a representative body getting insight into how reliant the industry is on migrant workers or those with work permits, do the witnesses have anything to say to us on that?

Quite honestly, I could not operate my business without international labour. International labour was first part of society in Ireland, in the medical profession 20 years or 30 years ago, and quickly translated into so many other professions, including our own. We have a skills shortage in Ireland, and there was discussion this morning about chefs. In my team of nearly 150 ambassadors for our industry that work in my hotel, I have nine Sri Lankan chefs. I could not operate my business without those folks. They are incredible at what they do. They make a contribution to society. They make a contribution by spending the wages they earn in the local economy. They also educate us to become more culturally diverse in the work that we do. I have concerns about some of the narrative on what is being potentially proposed. Of course, discussion will take place back and forth before whatever the outcome is and what it would look like. The Cathaoirleach also referred to language students coming in. They are entitled to work for a number of hours per week within the rota they have in the schools where they are learning English. Many of those folks want roles that help them converse in order that their conversational English improves. We see these individuals working in hotels in roles such as housekeeping, or in the kitchen areas and preparation areas, etc. They make a really valid contribution.

What I am concerned about is, for example, a member who has a hotel here in Dublin, two of whose employees encountered racial abuse on their way home from work one evening. That narrative is not good. We are a country of welcomes. We, as a nation, went to other countries and were welcomed into those nations at a time when our country needed it. We have to be mindful of that story of how a functioning society operates. There is no doubt that a debate is needed, but we need to be mindful of how it is tackled and challenged to ensure that we do not come before the committee again in 12 months' time or 18 months' time to say we have an existential skills crisis because work permits are being denied or international labour outside the EEA cannot come in to work in jobs where they want to make a valid contribution to our economy.

We have a role to play and we will be doing something next year on a diverse workforce. I think we have all seen the picture of staff posed on a staircase, all of them in the medical profession, and when all of the overseas staff stepped out, I think there were only two Irish people in the picture. Clearly, the hospital and medical system would not work without the overseas workforce and our industry is just the same. Industry availability of employee labour is critical to the success of the Irish hospitality sector and many other sectors across agriculture and construction. We have a responsibility to stand up and say any behaviour by Irish citizens against people who are legitimately here working hard and paying taxes to the State has no place in our society. We should speak up and say that it is just not acceptable, and that is something that we are going to be focusing on going forward. We simply could not survive without the workforce we have, and they are part of the very rich experience that our visitors from overseas enjoy. In many cases, some of these individuals do a better job than we do ourselves.

Okay, that is interesting, and I appreciate that. Does Deputy Gogarty want to say anything for the second round?

I am just going to be devil's advocate. I agree with everything that has been said. I proposed to both the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach that we should have a citizens' forum to discuss issues of immigration and asylum in an open way. It could involve newcomers who are now Irish citizens, for example. Let us have that debate and get rid of all the tropes and the hatred. To be devil's advocate for a second, and I remember saying this 20 years ago as a TD, and that was more in the context of people from eastern Europe working in the hospitality sector, I know we have to diversify where we are getting tourist visitors from, but Americans in particular and, to a lesser extent, UK visitors have a preconception about what a traditional Irish welcome is. While acknowledging the huge contribution made by newcomers in the hospitality sector, what can be done to get more Irish people involved in the sector?

We referenced it earlier this morning in relation to getting into using language. We are a profession and not an industry. We need to be recognised as a profession. On the Continent, particularly in France, families work in the profession as waiters and waitresses. These jobs are wholly recognised as career progressions with really sound lifetime experiences and livelihoods. We need to influence the parents of the next generation. In my own hotel, we have a bank of 20 students sourced from local schools who work with us. In January we invite their parents in for a sit-down meal served by their sons and daughters, to give their parents an understanding of how brilliant some of these young people are and that they could be wonderful ambassadors and advocates for our industry because they got it. We also need to get to the second level schools and the career guidance counsellors to change the narrative. We have a role in that but so does Government and all the other actors. I remind the committee that we are the largest indigenous industry in this country. We cannot reposition ourselves anywhere else, as I said, so we are here to stay. Tourism is growing and we need to ensure those immersive experiences are there and get more people in because, my God, I have been in it since I was 14 years of age. It has been an incredible career in an industry that I am so proud of. I am delighted to be in a profession where I saw my career grow and one that allows my children to have the opportunity to come into it as well.

Thank you both for the information, which has provided a lot of insight.

As I said, it is important to remember that we will be doing the briefing with the Department and the Minister early in the new year. We have our Estimates coming up shortly with the Department as well.

I know both Mr. Magner and Mr. Gallagher have strong connections to Cork and the local area. It is great to see them here in the committee with us. I thank them most sincerely.

The public session of the joint committee is now adjourned until Wednesday, 10 December at 12.30 p.m. The select committee will meet at 12.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 3 December 2025. The joint committee will meet on 2 December 2025 at 2.15 p.m. for a private virtual meeting.