The witnesses are very welcome to our public meeting. Apologies have been received from Senator Conor Murphy.

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

I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they 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, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member partaking via Microsoft Teams that prior to making their contribution to the meeting they confirm that they are on the grounds of 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 they comply with any such direction.

I suggest we invite our witnesses to speak for approximately ten minutes and then allow members to speak and make comments for approximately seven minutes each. If we have time, members will be allowed to make a second contribution. Members will be called as they appear on the week-three speaking rota, which has been circulated. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I propose we publish the opening statements and submissions provided by the witnesses on the committee website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The minutes of the previous meetings on 16 and 17 December 2025 were circulated and agreed in private session. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Before we move on, I take the opportunity to thank the clerk of the committee, Mr. Leo Bollins, and the teams at the embassy of Ireland to the United States and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the work they put into the trip to Washington DC and West Virginia. I sincerely thank Mr. Roger Hanshaw, speaker of the West Virginia state legislature, for the warm reception we received. It was a productive visit on strengthening economic co-operation, analysing the opening of a West Virginia trade office in Ireland, and growing increasing links in the area of education. An element of discussion was higher education and entrepreneurial activity as well. We had some good opportunities, including meeting people on the boards of Amazon and JPMorganChase and other companies that have an active presence here, the president of a university and the governor of West Virginia. Separately, in Washington DC, I sincerely thank the ambassador, H.E. Geraldine Byrne Nason, who is doing an exceptional job in representing the State in the USA. I think we will all agree these are exceptional and difficult times diplomatically. As Cathaoirleach of this committee, I thank members for permitting us to go. We also had the opportunity to meet members of the House of Representatives - we had engagements with eight of them. There is a strong warmth for Ireland and what we are doing diplomatically and for the bilateral trading relationship we enjoy with the United States of America. It was a productive visit, so I again thank the clerk and team of the committee for the work that went into it.

The committee has decided to hear from stakeholders on matters relating to Irish tourism. The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment invited the witnesses to the committee to discuss matters related to tourism generally; incentivising hotel construction, particularly outside Dublin; and the Department's new tourism strategy and related matters. I am delighted to welcome representatives of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, ITIC. Mr. Eoghan O'Mara Walsh, chief executive, is here today. We are also joined by Ms Anne O'Donoghue, deputy chair of ITIC and chief executive of the Irish Heritage Trust. I now invite Mr. O'Mara Walsh to make his opening contribution to the meeting. He is welcome.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I am delighted the committee had a successful trip to the USA. It is fundamental to the success of Irish tourism. The better the relations across the Atlantic, the better.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on matters relating to Irish tourism. ITIC is the representative group for tourism interests across the public and private sectors. I am joined today, as the Cathaoirleach said, by our deputy chair, Ms Anne O'Donoghue and we will be happy to take any questions that follow.

Tourism is critical to the Irish economy. CSO figures show that 225,000 people are employed in the sector and it is particularly important to regional Ireland. The sector is worth almost €9 billion annually and it is an enormous net contributor to the Exchequer, with 29 cent of every euro going back to the national coffers in tourism-related taxes. I am delighted to make this short opening statement with a particular focus on the performance of Irish tourism, its opportunities and its challenges.

After much advocacy by ITIC, tourism was moved to an economic portfolio last year and we are delighted with the reconfigured Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. The reconfiguration has been welcomed by industry leaders as it is a much better fit for this key economic engine of the country. The new focus has already begun to pay dividends with the publication last month of a new five-year national policy on tourism and the decision in budget 2026 to reduce the VAT rate for food services to 9%, which comes into effect in July. This will give hospitality businesses a buffer, as costs continue to escalate elsewhere. We argue that the 9% VAT rate should be extended - at very little cost - to other key tourism stakeholders, such as attractions, adventure operators and camping sites. It is only right that Ireland's largest indigenous industry and biggest regional employer is treated like the economic engine it is. No other sector can spread economic benefit to every parish in the country. Looking across swathes of the Wild Atlantic Way, from Kinsale to Bundoran, it is clear that tourism is the main show in town.

CSO data on tourism point to a challenging time, with 2025 statistics reporting a 6% drop in the volume of overseas visitors and a 13% drop in their spend levels. Industry intelligence is less alarmist pointing to a flat or marginally-down year. This misalignment of official national data and industry data is something we have been concerned about for some time and we urge the Department and agencies to adopt new data sources, including bank data and consumer research, to augment CSO surveys. Despite ongoing cost of business concerns, the industry is cautiously optimistic about 2026, predicated on strong air access from North America and, crucially, a stable global economy.

We are all aware of the geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty and tourism is uniquely vulnerable to external shocks. There is certainly a concern in the industry that we are becoming too dependent on the North American market. This needs to be strengthened, deepened and defended but we also need to diversify our market. Industry and the State agencies, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, are up for the challenge and the Government is also making the right noises. However, to truly stimulate demand in new markets, a step change in tourism budgets is needed. This year, €182 million was allocated to the tourism agencies for current spending, an increase of €6 million on last year’s budget. This is wholly inadequate to deliver any meaningful market diversification.

National policy is big on promises but relatively small on detail. For example, there is no budgetary commitment to help the industry to achieve its growth ambitions. There are 71 recommendations in the policy and these will need to be prioritised and implemented in full for it to have an impact. As always, the devil is in the detail. For example, the revenue growth figure of 6% per annum out to 2031 sounds impressive but tourism inflation will have to be tamed for it to be truly meaningful. Continued inflation squeezes margins and leads to increased prices. We have to be careful that we moderate prices where possible and continue to offer good value for money.

Basic economics suggests that the best way to moderate inflation is through increased supply. There are certain capacity restrictions at the heart of Irish tourism which cause concern. One is the Dublin Airport passenger cap, which is stubbornly in place. Second, the pipeline of new hotel stock is slowing. Third, the car rental sector, which is important to Irish tourism could be hobbled by an unrealistic EU mandate that is forthcoming and the Government's impending short-term letting legislation risks denuding regional and coastal Ireland of tourist holiday homes and self-catering properties.

I will briefly talk about these challenges and then I will be open to questions. Some 70% of the Irish tourism economy is dependent on international visits and Dublin is the main gateway. We saw from the recent complaint by US airlines to the US Department of Transportation in Washington DC how important this matter is. The US airlines have asked the Department of Transportation in the US to restrict Irish airlines' access to the US because of the restrictions at Dublin Airport. It has become serious. It was always serious but it is now being further amplified and we urge the Government to move quickly to legislate to lift the Dublin Airport passenger cap once and for all, so tourism and the broader economy can grow without the restraint of the passenger cap.

Moving to the area of new hotels, experts in JLL, CBRE and others, will say that the pipeline of new hotels has slowed. New hotels are opening in Dublin, which is to be welcomed, but crucially, in regional Ireland outside Dublin, there is very little hotel development activity and this is a cause of concern. If we want to disperse tourism numbers regionally, we need tourism beds and the issue of hotel development incentives needs to come back onto the table. Construction costs and planning delays are making the construction of new hotels outside Dublin unviable at the moment.

I am also keen to mention car rental. Tourism is reliant on a healthy car rental sector for tourists to get to the regions. Due to poor connectivity around the country, tourists often need to rent a car. There is a proposed EU mandate to come into effect by 2030, that the whole car rental fleet needs to move to electric vehicles, EVs. In the past, the date for this was 2035 and everyone had signed up to it.

There is a lack of electric vehicle, EV, infrastructure around the country, and particularly at Dublin Airport. Over 80% of car hires happen at Dublin Airport and there simply is not the EV infrastructure to facilitate the movement of the car hire fleet to all EVs by 2030. We strongly urge the Irish Government to push back on this.

On the subject of short-term letting, which is a politically sensitive issue because it is part of the housing debate, we have to remember that self-catering properties and holiday homes have been a staple of the Irish tourism product for decades. The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, ITIC, has commissioned an economic study to look at how the legislation as it is currently designed will impact the short-term rental market and it could have very serious consequences for regional Ireland. We are firmly of the view that the register for short-term rentals, which has been talked about for ages, needs to come into effect. This sector needs to be regulated. The register needs to come into effect, as previously agreed, as of May 2026, but there needs to be a period of grace - up to nine months I would argue - to allow all properties on that register become planning compliant. Otherwise, we will have a cliff edge whereby the register comes into effect on 20 May, the day before we will have lots of self-catering properties homes available for tourist use and the day after we will have virtually none because of the planning stipulations. I would also argue that a steering group also needs to be established without delay to ensure that those planning guidelines for the short-term letting market are fit for purpose and proportionate and that regional Ireland is protected.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for their time. I am happy for the Cathaoirleach to open up the meeting to any questions.

I thank Mr. O'Mara Walsh. That was very interesting. It is very topical in the current climate and I appreciate that.

The speaking rota today, to run through it quickly, is as follows. First will be Deputy McCormack. We have a Sinn Féin substitute today, Deputy Cathy Bennett, filling in for Senator Conor Murphy, who has the second slot. Slot three is Senator Linda Nelson Murphy from Fine Gael. Fourth is a Fianna Fáil slot again. Number one is Deputy Tony McCormack from County Offaly.

I thank Mr. O'Mara Walsh, for coming in and for his opening statement today. We have got to be cognisant of how important tourism is to Ireland and to areas in Ireland that do not have strong indigenous industry or foreign direct investment coming in to them. It is getting into places that other businesses do not get into and is creating economic activity. These are in the areas that are probably most scenic in the country and they are most sought after by a lot of tourists.

I will concentrate on a couple of different areas. Cost competitiveness and value for money is one of them. First, Ireland is frequently cited as a high-cost destination for tourism. From the ITIC's perspective, what are the top three cost drivers currently undermining Ireland's tourism competitiveness? To what extent do VAT rates, local authority charges and regulatory costs impact pricing for visitors and what specific changes is the ITIC seeking from the Government on this? How does the confederation respond to growing international commentary that Ireland offers poor value for money compared with comparable European destinations?

I thank the Deputy. I will answer and then if Ms O'Donoghue wants to jump in, she can.

The Deputy is right. Ireland is an expensive country in which to operate a tourism or hospitality business. Indeed, Eurostat, which comes out with these numbers, has Ireland as the second most expensive country across the EU, after only Denmark. All those increased input costs find their way to room prices, meal prices and pub prices. What is absolutely critical for us as an industry is that we continue to offer value for money because we are never going to be the cheapest destination. We are never going to compare favourably with the likes of Spain or Türkiye but we have to make sure that the experience that tourists have here is enriching, compelling, exciting, rewarding and, crucially, value for money.

The Deputy asked about cost drivers. Ms O'Donoghue runs three or four visitor attractions. She could probably tell the Deputy more. Labour is a huge headache. Energy is a huge headache, as are local authority rates and insurance. We would argue that where the State can control any of these costs, for example, labour, it should at this stage - it has jumped far too much and too quickly in recent times - mirror inflation and should be no more. There is a tipping point there. For example, I mentioned in my opening statement that the US market is critically important to Irish tourism. The US market can afford the Irish tourism product because the dollar is relatively strong. They have a strong economy over there. Ireland actually is priced very well compared with prices in the US but if something happened to the US because of economic volatility - we obviously hope it does not - it would be very difficult to replace that business with, say, European business or with British business and part of the problem would be that the price point we have in Irish tourism is a bit too expensive for big chunks of that European market. We have to be very careful about price. The profit margins in tourism and hospitality businesses are fairly wafer-thin already and anything that the State or Government can do to moderate prices is particularly important. When you talk about Offaly, and think of Lough Boora or any of these places, tourism is critically important. I saw an advertisement as I came here for the County Arms in Birr. For every euro that a tourist spends on accommodation, €2.50 goes on ancillary tourism services such as shops, attractions and pubs. It is absolutely critical and we need to nurture and support it.

I do not know whether Ms O'Donoghue wants to jump in with anything.

I also have interests in terms of another representative association, which comprises approximately 140 members who are visitor experiences and attractions operators. I am not only running them myself but also a voice for a subsector of the wider tourism sector, and on average, wages and salaries would be 52% plus of total costs.

It is fair to say that we are all very supportive of having a living wage. We are. This is a high-cost economy and it follows, therefore, that wages need to keep pace with that. The difficulty, I suppose, is the embedded increases plus continuing increases. For example, when the Low Pay Commission recommendations are accepted and implemented, that is not just an implication in terms of a business cost increase for that particular segment but it also impacts those who are earning a little bit above that. There is a push effect.

Absolutely. What happens, though, is it is making ourselves more uncompetitive on the international market whereas, as we spoke about earlier, tourism is such a valuable contributor to the national purse.

One hundred per cent, yes.

It is something that we heard from most of the groups that have come in here and that are dealing with the public front-on, that is, the minimum wage and wage increase recommendations coming from the Low Pay Commission are probably being treated as too acceptable by the Government at this stage and the Government now needs to link the minimum wage-----

To inflation.

-----to inflation. That is a fairer way of going on it.

I will move on from that to regional and rural tourism. I only have a minute and a half left. What evidence can the ITIC provide that current tourism policy is delivering balanced regional growth rather than concentrating benefits in Dublin and a small number of other tourism hot spots around the country? Are rural and smaller tourism businesses adequately represented within the ITIC when it comes to making policy decisions? How does the ITIC ensure that their concerns are not overshadowed by the larger operators?

I will answer quickly and let Ms O'Donoghue in, because she runs the likes of Strokestown Park in County Roscommon.

The good news is that the national policy announced last month by the Minister for tourism, Deputy Peter Burke, had a strong focus on regional tourism, plus 7% growth per annum. That is required because we need to balance. Tourism, first of all, is Ireland's biggest regional employer. We do a lot for the regions but we could do a lot more. As the Deputy mentioned at the outset, there is not necessarily other industry in parts of regional Ireland. Tourism needs to really front up.

One of the concerns we have is that there is not adequate accommodation capacity in regional Ireland. We would love that tourists, instead of using the midlands, for example, as a transit zone between Dublin and the Wild Atlantic Way, actually use it as a touring zone and have proper dwell time but there is a lack of accommodation capacity. We need to look seriously at incentives to construct new hotel stock but also make sure we protect short-term rentals, self-catering properties and holiday homes because they are a key part of the regional tourism economy and at the moment, the short-term letting legislation risks undermining all of that and taking thousands of beds out of the stock which is going to make it very difficult to grow tourism revenue. I will let Ms O'Donoghue in here.

There are two points I would add to that. I agree wholeheartedly with what Mr. O'Mara Walsh is saying.

I am from the country. I grew up in a small-town environment. I understand the importance in my lived experience of what tourism means for the wider economy, not just directly for tourism itself.

Tourists do not come to a geographic area per se. They are brought in by people and by experiences. The increased costs and complexity around compliance in the regulatory environment have a disproportionately large effect on SMEs. The majority of tourism businesses, particularly in regional and rural Ireland, are SMEs. We are thrilled to have iconic tourism businesses. They may have a positive spin-off effect in an area, but for the majority of the businesses it is disproportionately more difficult for them to resource the costs of compliance and even to acquire the knowledge to understand. That is not to say people do not want to be compliant. Businesses do, but it is a greater challenge.

The second thing I would say is-----

I apologise but we are under a bit of time pressure.

I am sorry. Apologies.

We might come back to Deputy McCormack in the second round. I thank Ms O'Donoghue very much.

I thank the Chair for letting me in to speak in this committee. Mr. O'Mara Walsh and Ms O'Donoghue are very welcome. I thought the subject was very relevant, so I decided to attend today's meeting. We are talking about the future of tourism in Ireland. How does that relate to all-Ireland tourism? When the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation goes abroad, are we promoting Ireland as a 32-county country? How is that done?

Yes, we are. Tourism is unique in that the sector was chosen after the Good Friday Agreement as an all-island sector. That makes perfect sense to everyone in this room but also to overseas tourists because they do not understand the fictitious boundary lines or whatever. There is an agency called Tourism Ireland, which has been in existence for 20-plus years, ever since the Good Friday Agreement. It promotes Ireland overseas as an island of Ireland destination. For example, it just did its marketing plan launch on Monday. It is looking for 6% growth this year across the whole island. International visitors simply look at Ireland as a single destination. They do not differentiate between north, south, west and east.

ITIC is a 26-county organisation simply because of the jurisdictional footprint, but we have a sister organisation north of the Border, with which we work very closely. It is an all-island sector and there is an all-island agency, supported by Fáilte Ireland on the ground in the Republic and Tourism Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland.

At some stage, I would like to do a report on that, just to show how it is working North and South, that everyone is getting an equal amount of advertising, and that the North is advertising the Twenty-six Counties, so that we are all working together. I plan on doing a report on that later so I just wanted to ask a few questions on it.

A 26% drop in the volume of overseas visitors and a 13% reduction in spend levels were reported in the 2025 statistics. It was also stated that the industry intelligence is more flat and marginally down. Early last year, the Central Statistics Office first reported that there was a decrease in visitors. Were the statistics from both the North and the South?

No, just the South. The CSO is just for the Twenty-six Counties and the data publication and collation in the Republic is much quicker than the North. In the North there is an entity called the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, NISRA, which tends to be a little bit slower.

The CSO data is compiled using exit surveys. It surveys a sample of overseas visitors as they are leaving the country. It asks where they are from, how long they were here for and how much they spent, but it is only a survey. The industry data we have is heads on pillows, bums on seats, or the number of meals eaten, which is much more robust. Certainly, 2025 was not a great year but it was not the sort of double-digit decline that the CSO outlined. That is why we are arguing that Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland should adopt a new data collection policy, alongside the CSO, just to augment what the CSO does.

Yes, there seems to be a difference of opinion.

I believe, though, that there was a different experience, depending on the region. Certain parts of the country were steady Eddie year on year, while others had quite a decline in footfall. The experience varied quite dramatically. The midlands area was probably more negatively affected than the south east or east.

I am from Monaghan, which is part of the Hidden Heartlands that is being promoted. I must look to see what is included in the Hidden Heartlands. Would the Chair agree to write to the CSO to get an insight on why there is a difference of opinion and to ensure we are getting the right statistics? We should be getting the right statistics on tourism every year. When I look at different articles there are different statistics available. With the agreement of the Chair, we could write to the CSO.

We can discuss that in private session. It is certainly something that could be looked at. It could be interesting to get the data.

Yes, it would be good to get the correct figures. There seems to be a big variance in the figures. Could we get the figures for the North and the South and amalgamate them so as to get an all-Ireland perspective?

ITIC also referenced that the national policy is big on promises and relatively small on detail. It asked that 71 recommendations for a new tourism policy be prioritised. Which of these would have the greatest impact on supporting tourism operators?

Deputy Bennett is right. There are 71 recommendations. There is going to be a policy oversight group. That is important because it will determine what gets prioritised. There are various things that we would like to see addressed, one being the capacity blockages that I mentioned, whether it is the Dublin Airport passenger cap, the lack of approved accommodation stock in the regions or the curbs on short-term rentals in coastal and rural Ireland. All of that needs to be addressed.

There needs to be a strong focus on the cost of business. Deputy McCormack mentioned the 9% VAT rate. I did not come back to him on it. That has been very strongly welcomed, but we must remember that it just mitigates some of the escalating costs elsewhere. We can never take our eye off the ball.

To go back to one of our central points, tourism is the poster child for regional economic development. It could do an awful lot more but it needs the enabling infrastructure to do it. The great thing is that we have a really good tourism product. When tourists leave the country they say, "Wow, I had a brilliant time in Ireland." That is super. We do it really well, but we could do it better. The industry will do its bit but the State and its agencies also need to step in.

That is very good. Mr. O'Mara Walsh said that one of the hopes is that the Department would conduct a comprehensive capacity study of Irish tourism before the growth targets are set. Were his views or those of his members sought in this regard? Did they have an input into that?

No. I saw a draft of the policy and I gave feedback on it, but it was done informally. There was not a consultation with the industry. The policy could probably have been strengthened by that. For example, as I mentioned, the policy specifies 7% growth per annum for regional tourism, which is great. We would love to deliver that. Ms O'Donoghue would love to get growth of 7%-plus in Strokestown Park, Johnstown Castle or wherever-----

Or in Monaghan.

-----and in Monaghan, but some of the enabling infrastructure is not there, and that is a cause of concern.

Would that be a reason for us to write to the Department and put that question to it?

Absolutely. It is something we can discuss in private session. I will have to formally get agreement from the committee members in order to do that. I see the merit of what the Deputy suggests. I will certainly have a discussion with her colleagues in that regard.

Yes, just to make sure that everybody is on the same page. I thank the Cathaoirleach very much for his lenience. I also thank the witnesses.

Deputy Bennett is very welcome. Next we have a Fine Gael slot. I call Senator Linda Nelson Murray.

I thank all the witnesses very much for coming in. I count the business my husband and I have in Navan as being in the tourism industry. It is an indoor activity centre. It is not recognised as being part of the tourism industry. If you go out on a boat on a lake on a nice sunny day, that is counted as being in the tourism industry, but if it starts to lash rain and the wind comes and you move into a bowling alley, that is not counted as tourism. It makes no sense. That is something we need to sort out.

From the tourism side, I do not like when things prevent us from being able to do our business. I am so glad the witnesses are here to discuss all these issues. Last Saturday, I drove from Oldcastle to Boardsmill, where I had a few events. I have a fully electric car. I love my electric car. I feel like I am doing my bit. I was running out of charge and I called in to two places. I nearly had a heart attack because neither charging point was working and I did not know what I was going to do. I was on the phone to my husband to tell him he would probably have to come and get me. I eventually got sorted but I had to deal with the panic. This was in my own county where I know the roads. I can only imagine what tourists feel like when they come here.

I want to go through some details I have prepared. It was mentioned that the European Commission is currently working on a regulatory proposal for clean corporate vehicles, which will consider imposing an accelerated purchase mandate on commercial fleets that would lead to fleets across Europe being obliged to purchase a number of electric vehicles, EVs, by 2030.

We are now in 2026. As has been mentioned, this will especially impact the car rental industry. The Car Rental Council of Ireland has said that visitors to Ireland are reluctant to rent fully electric cars. They rent out as little as 24%. What are the implications for regional tourism if that Commission proposal goes through as it stands? If I am panicking and I am from the area, I can only imagine how a tourist will feel.

I concur with the Senator. Ireland needs to push back and be serious about this because the consequences for tourism are fairly profound, particularly in regional Ireland because the infrastructure is simply not in place. There is no reluctance from car hire firms or tourism leaders to-----

It is not that they do not want to do it.

-----be as sustainable as possible. I always use the example of the fleet of boats on the Shannon. They were all diesel but now run on hydrotreated vegetable oil. This has reduced carbon emissions by about 92%. It is absolutely brilliant. There is a similar commitment on car hire. We were always told 2035. We were fully on board with that because the infrastructure would be in place. As the Senator said, visitors are very reluctant to commit to a fully electric vehicle because of concerns about recharging and so on. For example, if you want to get to Kylemore Abbey, which is near Clifden, you would be seriously worried if you were using an electric vehicle. We need to push back. If this mandate to change over by 2030 goes through, it could have serious consequences for regional Ireland. We need to come up with a more pragmatic and practical solution.

I suppose we should ask to be given more time. Has anyone been on to the people who run Google Maps to ensure it showcases where EV chargers are around the country? I search when I am going around and it is very hard to find them. Has the confederation made representations to request that to help tourists who are coming in?

We have not but it is a good idea.

It is a good idea, is it not?

It is something we should probably do. I will talk to Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development authority, to see if it has done anything like that. I am sure the Car Rental Council of Ireland will have been on to it. It is a very good idea. Dublin Airport is the classic example. About 80% of cars hired-----

I read those numbers.

-----are hired from Dublin Airport. The airport does not have the infrastructure and will not until about 2033.

It therefore makes no sense to move forward to 2030.

It is just unrealistic. We should push back against it.

That is okay. For the next few minutes, I will talk to the witnesses about the short-term letting Bill. I am really concerned about this. We had some representatives from county councils in here a couple of weeks ago. There were representatives from Cork County Council, Dublin City Council, Kerry County Council and Clare County Council. I asked if they could tell me how much housing this Bill and the introduction of the register in May would release into the market and what impact it would have on the tourism industry but none of those councils could do so. We may be doing this at the wrong time. We do not seem to have all the numbers we should as regards the impact on tourism and how it will help with issues in our housing sector. The majority of rural accommodation providers are SMEs, family self-catering businesses, operating without short-term rental planning permission. What will the economic impact on Ireland following 20 May? Short-term lets make up the largest proportion of bed nights outside of the four main counties. What steps should be taken to minimise the impacts of the short-term letting legislation?

The Senator is right. The sector is completely unregulated at the moment. It is a grey zone. Nobody is entirely sure how many short-term letting properties, self-catering properties or apartments there are out there. Nobody quite knows. We are finalising some work with an independent economist with a view to putting some numbers on it. The solution is very straightforward and very pragmatic. This sector needs to be regulated. We need to introduce the register the Senator has mentioned on 20 May. After all, this is coming from Europe. Let us introduce the register so that we can see, once and for all, how many short-term letting properties there are nationally and regionally. However, let us give a nine-month period before the planning stipulations kick in, giving properties nine months to become planning compliant. We need that breathing space. Otherwise, as I mentioned earlier, on 19 May, there will be tens of thousands of properties available to let and, on 20 May, that number will fall off a cliff. That would be very damaging to regional Ireland. The Senator is right. There has been no modelling done as to how many properties are going to come back into the long-term rental market. Lots of properties out there are owned by people who just let them for a few weeks of the year to bring in a little bit of money, which is used for the upkeep of the property, which they enjoy for the rest of the summer. If that property is suddenly unavailable because the owner cannot get planning permission and is therefore not allowed to put it on the register, the local community will lose out on the tourism euro.

With regard to my own business, we only have a couple of hotels in Navan so we depend on those short-term lets.

All ITIC is looking for is a balanced and pragmatic approach. As the legislation currently defines things, you are only allowed on the register if you have appropriate planning permission. Lots of properties never needed planning permission heretofore. They have been told for years to wait for the planning guidelines but there are no planning guidelines. It is a complete mess. We should introduce the register so that we no longer have to rely on estimates and can see once and for all the number of properties that are out there. The owners should then have a nine-month period to allow them to become compliant. That is the approach I would take.

The witnesses are very welcome here today. At the outset, will they summarise the main things the committee should focus on to best support the industry? One thing I am concerned about across the country is that we have all these bodies, such as Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and so on. How do we make sure they are pulling together and working collectively? How can the committee be as constructive as possible?

The Deputy is right. Tourism is a broad church. The State apparatus for tourism can also be a broad church. I think we are fairly harmonious. ITIC is the main industry body but there are sectoral bodies underneath it. Fáilte Ireland is the national tourism development authority here at home while Tourism Ireland's focus is overseas. There are a number of good initiatives under way at the moment. I encourage their continuation. There is something called destination experience development plans. Ms O'Donoghue knows more about these than I do but they bring together all the tourism stakeholders in a particular region to pull in the one direction.

With regard to this committee, first of all, I am delighted it has invited us to speak because that shows it is committed to and interested in tourism. I would encourage the committee to write formally to the Minister or the Department to encourage support for the sector on some of the issues we have raised, such as car hire, short-term rentals and the cost of doing business. The sector is just too important to take for granted.

Early engagement when policy is being evolved and before its implementation is critical. Any broad tourism bodies, including representative bodies such as ITIC, should be at the table as early as possible. We have three or four burning platform issues. These include capacity and bed stock. To go back to what the Senator was saying, we are approaching a cliff edge. The issue of the lack of hotel capacity and the lack of enablers to generate further hotel capacity in the regions is going to be exacerbated further by the implementation of the short-term lets legislation. There is a perfect storm coming towards us very quickly. The local tourism economy cannot thrive without footfall. Early engagement and industry representation is required to develop practical solutions.

The area I represent, Galway East, is in an awkward position. Part of the constituency is covered by Hidden Heartlands, which is fantastic, and another huge part is covered by the Wild Atlantic Way. Both areas have seen tremendous benefits from that marketing and from being along those routes, making them more discoverable for tourists. Athenry, in the centre of Galway, is associated with a song that is known worldwide and has a worldwide reputation.

How do we make sure that a town like Athenry is found when there is no underlying plan to attract people?

Product development is key.

Yes.

Visitors, particularly international visitors, want experiential things of scale and international appeal. Fáilte Ireland has a capital budget to spend over the next few years so of particular importance is identifying areas and projects for investment. For example, I always talk about the idea of a coast-to-coast greenway that goes from Dublin all the way through the midlands, Athenry and the rest of County Galway to the Wild Atlantic Way. That is something really compelling and really exciting. It is something that can be marketed domestically and abroad. Product development is key, as is investment. Ms O'Donoghue will add to this.

Mr. O'Mara Walsh has referenced destination and experience development plans, DEDPs. I think my numbers are current. Fáilte Ireland had 35 DEDPs either in implementation stage or in development stage. Basically, those plans encourage the wider community embracing tourism to own and be real participants in it. Tourism has a much wider socioeconomic benefit than just the direct revenue stream, which is significant. I am a co-chair of one of the implementation groups in the Hidden Heartlands region across two and half counties and these are five-year implementation strategies. I am sorry, Deputy, but I am not familiar with where the Athenry plan is at.

That is okay.

The plans are really worthwhile. Fáilte Ireland is incredibly engaged in them and they are to be encouraged. They have local authority representation, local development companies, local enterprise offices, LEOs, and industry and community group representation. To me, that seems to be one of the channels that should be actively encouraged.

Yes. From that perspective, there is a body of work to be done-----

Yes.

-----to ensure that no area gets left behind. Obviously there are certain areas that have assets that no area could compare to, but definitely that does not mean the benefit cannot be shared.

Last, I want to discuss short-term letting regulations from Europe. It will be our duty to transpose and implement them. Where do the witnesses see this committee being able to affect change on those regulations in advance of the regulations being implemented and how can we ensure that is effective?

The Deputy is right. It comes from the EU and the EU demands that a register is put in place. Nobody argues with that. In fact, ITIC has led the charge for some time to say that this area needs transparency. We need to know the number of short-term rentals around the country because this area has operated in the grey zone for too long. My view is that the committee could support the industry with a view that the register comes into effect but rather than the register and the planning stipulations being on the very same day, which will result in many thousands of properties falling off, a nine-month grace period is needed or-----

A deferred commencement.

-----a deferred commencement of the planning obligations to allow properties become planning-compliant. In the meantime, let us set up a high-level senior steering group, in which ITIC is happy to play its role, to make sure that those planning guidelines are fit for purpose because this is really important to regional Ireland. Nobody here is arguing that urban areas should not lose the blocks of Airbnbs and apartments. They should all come back to long-term rentals and will, but they will not in regional Ireland. That is the danger.

Yes.

I thank both Mr. O'Mara Walsh and Ms O'Donoghue for their presentation. I was heavily involved in the hotel industry and employed over 600 people so I very much sing off the same sheet as ITIC. I understand the industry's contribution, in terms of its workforce of almost 250,000 people and its revenue of almost €9 billion. If anything, we are underplaying the value of the hotel industry.

I want to discuss investment in rural Ireland. I want to know what we can do to stimulate construction and reintroduce derelict, closed and old hotels that might have been used as IPAS hubs. What do we need to do to get there? All I can do is outline two case studies. I am not being parochial because I know that what is happening in the towns or villages I am discussing is being replicated throughout Ireland. A local businessman, Thomas O'Loughlin, wants to build an hotel from scratch in Courtown, which has had a tough time and has literally lost its beach. I grew up there and my first job was working on the ghost train. Courtown has always been and is a huge part of the south east. Let us imagine what a new hotel could do for the area. In Aughrim, Lawless Hotel was bought ten days ago by the Murphy family, who are a local family. Like the O'Loughlins, the Murphys are a local family. They have given so much. They already have skin in the game and are not dipping their toe in the water. Both of these families already know about tourism. Nicky and Anthony Murphy are huge contributors in terms of sport and give so much. My gut feeling, as a former hotelier, is that both of these families want to get involved in the hotel industry in those areas to help their community as much as to make money, if not more so. They see the void created by not having an hotel in Courtown or Aughrim. If an hotel is open 365 days of the year, it will create employment and get young people off the N11 so that they do not have to drive up and down to Dublin. An hotel ticks so many boxes and uses local suppliers.

There are another two other factors that I often discuss. First, there is young people. In a town or village, and I know this first hand, it is so beneficial for a young person to work in an hotel. I have a neighbour in Gorey who sent their child who was struggling in school and lacked confidence to work in an hotel. What the industry did for that child during last summer was simply incredible. ITIC does not underestimate the industry but I want that message of such benefits to get out there.

Second, if an hotel closes down or is missing from a town like Aughrim, it is devastating and I know that because I travel to matches every second Sunday in Aughrim. The O'Loughlin and Murphy families need help because I know first hand that it is not financially viable now to build and operate an hotel in rural Ireland, though maybe in Dublin. Can the witnesses tell me how we can stimulate the market? I am sorry for dragging the point but I felt it was important.

The Deputy has made a very good point. My wife comes from Roscrea, which lost its only hotel when it was turned into an IPAS centre for international refugees. That means there is nowhere for people to go when there is a funeral or to celebrate communions. Having no hotel does not just have an impact on visitors; it also has an impact on local communities. An hotel is often the beating heart of a local town or community and spilling from that is that it benefits pubs and shops. I could not agree with the Deputy more and he made the point very well. ITIC's national policy contains a commitment to look at an accommodation strategy. The cart has been put before the horse in that the accommodation strategy should have been done before the policy. We are certainly looking at the strategy to see how we can incentivise expansions of current hotels and the construction of new hotels in regional Ireland. That will require quite a few levers to be pulled by either local authorities or central government in terms of development incentives and the waiver of rates by local authorities. All that sort of stuff needs to be put in place because at the moment it is economically not viable to construct an hotel both in terms of costs associated with construction and inflation, and planning delays. A few levers will have to be pulled because otherwise we will not have the accommodation capacity in regional Ireland to deliver all the growth we want.

I agree with Mr. O'Mara Walsh. To be fair to the Minister, the very first week I became a Deputy I discussed this very subject with him and I continue to hammer home this issue. Another key factor is access to funds.

Yes, absolutely.

In my opinion, the banks are closed in relation to hotels-----

Yes.

-----in rural Ireland.

Yes.

That is a key factor in terms of how we stimulate the sector.

Yes.

I know that the Minister is all over this-----

Yes.

-----but I look forward to bringing this forward. There has been enough talk and now is the time for action.

Yes.

Or else, as has been said, we will lose the heartbeat of communities.

Yes.

An hotel is the social fabric of every town and village in Ireland.

I have spoken in a local regard but this affects every county. It is in Offaly and wherever people want to go. When people drive through Ireland and see an empty hotel, they just know that town is struggling. I often say that everything from christenings to funerals and everything in between is celebrated in the local hotel. People make a great contribution from the local hotel. It is the heartbeat. If it is taken out of the town, there is that physical presence of driving through a town and seeing an empty hotel. We need to look at that. We need to look at the financing of this in terms of rates, as Mr. O’Mara Walsh said. There are many routes we can go down but we need to do something.

The Minister, Deputy Burke, has been quite dynamic and action-orientated since he took over the portfolio. He is probably the right man. Deputy Brennan is right; the enabling architecture needs to be put in place to allow private sector construction.

Finally, we have to sort out the cap. I know the witnesses are in agreement on this. Given the geopolitical situation of the world at the moment, tourism is key. I have no doubt that Mr. O’Mara Walsh is in agreement in that regard.

I am, absolutely.

That leads on to me. I welcome what the witnesses have said in relation to the airport cap. As a Government TD, quite frankly, I am embarrassed by how long it has taken for us to recognise, as an island nation, that we must address this. There are 5.4 million people in the Republic of Ireland and in and around 7 million people on the island of Ireland. In the context of how important Dublin airport is to the national economy and the expertise we have in the room today, hotel managers in Cork, Kerry, Donegal or Wexford will say that people arriving, particularly US customers, are coming in via Dublin Airport. It annoys me when people become parochial and use the regional airport argument. The economics need to stack up for airports to work and that is why the traffic has been so strong in terms of Cork Airport’s growth. Mr. O’Mara Walsh and I both know Niall MacCarthy well and he is doing an incredible job. His team around him is excellent. The growth figures at Shannon Airport have also been quite good.

Looking at companies like Aer Lingus, which is one of two major domestic airlines we have in this country, the other being Ryanair which has gone on to conquer Europe, it cannot scale unless it has a growth plan in terms of infrastructure at Dublin Airport. In my view - I am chairing the committee today but I also have a personal view on this – we are at a point where Dublin Airport needs to physically look at putting a third terminal or major terminal infrastructure in place by moving some of its hard infrastructure. We have asked Dublin Airport to come before us and it has declined. I know there are ongoing issues there which are regrettable. There are some serious capacity issues coming up outside of the cap because growth has been so strong.

It is important to note - I have come back from the United States - as committee members know, Ireland is one of only three countries in the world that have the US pre-clearance facility. It is common in Canada because they are next-door neighbours with each other but the only other airport I can think of that has it is Abu Dhabi. To my knowledge, no other airport in the European Union has US pre-clearance facilities. We have been gifted, both at Shannon and Dublin airports, this facility by the US Government, which has been long-standing, thankfully. It is not being used to its full potential, however. That needs to be dealt with as a matter of serious urgency. I know Michael O’Leary is back in the headlines today. While he can be very verbose, there is an element of truth in what he is saying. If I am not mistaken, Dublin Airport is the only airport in Europe that has a cap on its scale. I know people will have different views on this but I genuinely am embarrassed by how long this has taken. It needs dealt with as a matter of urgency.

I have one or two other things I wish to report back. We met the Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Tourism, who was fascinated by the success of the Wild Atlantic Way. Ireland sharing its expertise in different parts of the world could mean a lot diplomatically. Boosting bilateral tourism is not always a bad thing to do. I just wanted to flag that.

The committee has also been concerned - overall it is a majority view in the room - about the short-term letting register and how poorly thought out it has been, particularly when it comes to the cost that will be put on people who have been in the business for a substantial period of time. I do not wish to get into naming timelines, etc. I come from the town of Youghal in east Cork. Killeagh is my home part of the world. It is very reliant on small, self-catering businesses and bed and breakfast accommodation. The changes coming down the line could do monumental harm to a town like Youghal that has already lost over 60% of its tourist accommodation to IPAS, which has been discussed here before.

I wish to put two questions in the three minutes or so I have left. First, where do the witnesses, in terms of their organisation, see the blocker when it comes to the issue of the airport cap? Second, on the short-term letting register and the damage it could do to self-catering operators in Ireland, have the witnesses any key message for us to bring to the Department? We will be meeting with it shortly. What do the witnesses wish to convey on those two things?

On the cap, I fully agree with the Cathaoirleach. I am not going to repeat what he said but, as an island nation, it is self-evident that we are shooting ourselves in the foot having our main gateway restricted like that. There is a commitment in the programme for Government, as the Cathaoirleach said explicitly. The Government, as I understand it, has committed to legislatively intervene. The Minister, Deputy Burke, said on 4 February on stage that a Bill would be brought to Cabinet about lifting the Dublin Airport passenger cap. It just cannot happen quick enough because we are losing business. We talk about market diversification but for airlines from a new and emerging market like South America, India or wherever to seriously look at Ireland, they want certainty and there is huge uncertainty out there at the moment. The quicker that can be lifted, the better because it is a huge handbrake on growth for both the tourism and broader economy.

On short-term rental, I will repeat what I said. The main message this committee could give to the Department and the Minister is to put the register in place on 20 May, as we have always said should happen, so that once and for all we can see the number and nature of the short-term rentals around the country. We will be able to see exactly how many short-term rentals are in Youghal and all that sort of stuff. We should, however, give a nine-month window to allow those properties to adhere to whatever planning compliance is asked for. In the interim, a high-level steering group of Department officials, local authority planning officers and industry should be set up to devise those planning guidelines so that they are fit for purpose for regional Ireland.

Just to touch on it again, we were discussing the impact of the US Administration looking at potentially restricting Irish airlines – we are really speaking about Aer Lingus here – and the potential of the north American routes. Do the witnesses think that has been fully absorbed into the thinking of the Department of Transport? Does it recognise the existential economic risk it has put on it? People often forget that beneath the passenger seats on an aircraft, there are pallets containing extraordinarily valuable exports, often in the pharmaceutical or technology sectors. We have some world-renowned companies involved in the tech, pharmaceutical and life science sectors. Is there a full understanding of the risk? Is the Department acting appropriately in terms of the speed at which it is operating on this issue?

It has been remiss up to now to not tackle this issue head on. It is a huge issue. The danger with the formal complaint the lobby group, Airlines for America, has made to the Department of Transportation in the US is that it is suddenly on the Trump Administration’s table and agenda. We know how transactional that Administration is. I think 1 February is one of the deadlines, so it is coming at us very quickly. I cannot think of a more important issue for Irish tourism. A total of 70% of the Irish tourist economy is dependent on international visitation and the vast majority of that goes through Dublin Airport. The Cathaoirleach is right to say that Cork, Shannon and other airports are growing. They should be growing and should be supported but Dublin Airport is the main gateway. The Aer Lingus strategy is to use Dublin as a hub airport. Aer Lingus is part of IAG, which is a bigger group, and Dublin is the hub airport. It allows Aer Lingus to fly from the United States to Dublin and then on to its European network, which is brilliant for Irish tourism because it opens up about 25 gateways. That will come to a sharp stop unless we lift the Dublin Airport passenger cap.

To the Cathaoirleach’s point about capital development and construction at Dublin Airport, until the cap is lifted, Dublin Airport cannot get on and build those piers and gates that are needed. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling problem unless it is addressed. It has to be tackled with the upmost urgency.

My time is almost up.

The best thing that could happen for Shannon is the construction of the Cork-Limerick motorway. At the moment, if you are a consumer in Cork, you have a safe motorway all the way to Dublin Airport for transatlantic flying, unless you decide to go through the hubs in Charles de Gaulle or Schiphol Airports via Cork Airport. Some people do that, if it makes sense. That is where I see the transatlantic growth in Shannon taking a huge influx of passengers from the Munster area seeing the completion of that road. At the moment it is lethal. It is a very dangerous stretch of road, no matter what way you decide to go or not so. Advancing that would make a big difference.

On the Cork front, and people might be wondering why I am speaking about Dublin Airport, it is great to see the expansion plans there. They are happening. That is all happening through enormously positive work being done by the likes of Niall MacCarthy, the Cork Chamber of Commerce and the witnesses. They have been lobbying. I acknowledge that.

I thank the witnesses for being here today. This is an important discussion. To refer to the short-term lets, the submission is useful in that regard. It is crazy that we do not have the planning guidelines. We are trying to pre-legislative scrutiny on important legislation and we do not have the guidelines for us to be able to do that. I am really concerned about the here and now in terms of what happens in June, July and August for people in counties like Mayo. How can people plan or take bookings and all of those things? I use the opportunity today to urge the Minister to come on. Where are these guidelines? They cannot be that complicated. I know the local authorities are waiting for the guidelines but until we see them, we do not know what resources will be needed by the local authorities either. I do hope that we will have the Irish Self-Catering Federation before the committee to examine all of these things. As a committee, collectively, while we might disagree on other things, we want to ensure that the best outcomes are produced as a result of this legislation.

The other key thing for us as a committee is how we put tourism front and centre of the strategic national economic sector. It has always been a bit of an add-on. It really does concern me around the conflict around the data because it gives rise to the question of how any Government or Minister can ensure that tourism policy is evidence-based and not just reactive. To me, that would give rise to the question of whether money is being spent in the right areas. There are huge budgets for tourism but we need to make sure that they are put in the right direction for an overall strategy to work and to have proper fairness for the regions as well.

I know the Cathaoirleach talked a lot about Cork but I raise the Wild Atlantic Way and it fitting in with the economic corridor there. It is so important. They have to be completely in congruence with one another in order for us to be able to maximise that. There is no point in just having slogans or whatever unless we get this right. There is an opportunity for us to get this right. How can we have KPIs when we do not have the data that we can all be confident in?

Air connectivity to the regions is so important. I commend Knock Airport. There needs to be a think-in around that in terms of even the types of flights. On the one flight that comes in from Heathrow, which is really welcome, comes in at 11 a.m. on a Friday and it goes back at 11 a.m. on Sunday. That adjusted would mean that people could come in for the weekend for the region and go out again. Weekend destinations should not just be about Dublin, Cork or the bigger cities. They should also be about the regions. I am sorry that I am talking a lot but I am very passionate about this.

I will ask two questions. I want to ask about the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation's engagement with the financial institutions and the banks. I raise the seasonal nature of many of the tourism providers. What are they getting back from the banks? I am particularly concerned about situations where decisions are being made by AI and how those decisions will impact people who do not have the whole-year income. In terms of the staffing, what more can be done to ensure that we attract and retain skilled workers? How can tourism be promoted as a long-term, high-quality career for people?

I will jump in and then let Ms O'Donoghue chip in. On a couple of those things, the Deputy is right. Particularly in regional Ireland, tourism is still a seasonal business. What we would love to see is that season extended for as long as possible because that makes it more attractive to a bank or a financial institution. It was welcome in the national policy that I referenced earlier that it committed to season extension and regional dispersal. At least a hotel, restaurant, tourist attraction or a tour business can go to the bank and state it is State policy to increase the season or extend visitor numbers to this particular season. It supports them to a certain extent.

On the Deputy's point about careers, I think Deputy Brennan said it earlier. It is a wonderful profession. It is a profession as opposed to a temporary job within a career. Fáilte Ireland does some great work in it. It has an employer excellence programme. The industry does a lot of good stuff. The Irish Hotels Federation and Avia, which is Ms O'Donoghue's organisation, all do some really good stuff to identify how attractive a career it is, how people-oriented it is and how multiskilled it is. Sometimes I think it is not as glamorous a career as some of the other sectors out there but that does not mean that it is not critically important. One of the contributors earlier mentioned how a kid who was not doing very well at school or whatever was transformed by the first job in a hotel. We have all worked in hospitality or tourism in some shape or form. We need to dial up its importance. It is good that tourism is now the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment because we are taken seriously. Previously, we were in a six-headed Department and we were a little bit lost. We are now being taken seriously. We as an industry are kind of the first to dial up how important the sector is.

To add, traditionally, there may have been a negative perception around what tourism offered in terms of career trajectory, flexibility or moving through different levels. The industry is working very hard to try to make that happen. One must be cognisant of squeezed margins. Often, along with marketing, training is one of the expenditure lines that gets jettisoned or reduced. The affordability of external training is something to consider. It is so welcome that the National Training Fund is there. Skillnet is doing a pretty good job for our sector too. I am certainly keen, through wearing different hats, to try to ask and get members and representatives of tourism businesses to reach out and try to engage more with those particular bodies because those training funds are there. If they can be directed most appropriately, that will attract more people into the sector.

I also think the ETBs, some of the technological universities and so on are finding - I am finding this through the visitor experience and attraction side of things - that it is not economically viable to run courses in this space, which is a pity. They have to have a certain number of students. The businesses cannot afford to send the students or allow them the time because the labour cost is the highest cost in any business. I would love to find a way of unlocking some greater potential around that by greater co-operation.

I thank Mr. O'Mara Walsh and Ms O'Donoghue for joining us today. As a statement of intent, the fact that the Department is now the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment sets out very clearly, in terms of the objectives and some of the plans that we have seen announced by the Minister, Deputy Burke, in recent months, that tourism is getting a platform like never before. It is important to put that on the record.

In relation to visitor experiences, I have been involved in the industry myself for a good few years. When we look at the key attractions in the country such as the Guinness Storehouse, the Cliffs of Moher and the likes of the Book of Kells, are we seeing enough innovation and investment in new attractions, or is that an area of concern?

In terms of new attractions, there has been a strong focus through Fáilte Ireland to make sure that there are hero attractions within destination development areas. There is a continuing focus on significant investment there.

It is wonderful to see that the Just Transition Fund, which is co-funded by Ireland and Europe, is progressing significantly. My own organisation announced a €1.5 million project for Strokestown Park the other day and the majority of that is funded through the Just Transition Fund. Obviously, it requires match funding which is excellent because it shows private and entrepreneurial commitment. Having really well directed financial supports is important because the capital cost of creating new visitor attractions is very significant and the operating costs that follow also must be borne in mind. Having the financial support schemes that are very targeted and easily accessed is of critical importance. They should not just be easily accessible by large tourism operators that have the resources, capacity and capability to navigate complex application processes, but we should also find a way to make them accessible to SMEs. There are many national supports available that, maybe, are just not easily accessed. We need to do more to improve that.

In relation to the night-time economy, what do witnesses see as the largest challenge in that area at the moment?

Undoubtedly, the Covid-19 pandemic messed up the night-time economy.

Will it recover?

I think it will. We need proper licensing laws. We need, for example, the Dublin task force that has been spoken about for quite a while to happen. All those recommendations need to be implemented. The night-time task force is obviously important to the businesses that trade in the night-time economy but also it is just as important to the buzz, the atmosphere and the excitement to a particular area. It has taken a bit of a battering. As the Deputy will know, the pub sector in regional Ireland is struggling. We could do more in terms of rural transport, taxis and that sort of stuff in the regions to make it more viable because that night-time economy is particularly important. In a lot of rural towns the pub or the restaurant is closed on a Tuesday and Wednesday and sometimes there are tourists wandering around not sure of what to do. Anything that can be done to facilitate those kinds of businesses and keep them open and keep them trading is important. I think it will recover but we certainly need to put the shoulder to the wheel.

There have been a couple of references to the need to push regionally as opposed to, say, the core of Dublin, which is benefiting so much. If we look at passenger numbers in Dublin Airport and do some blue-sky thinking, there are about 35 million passengers. If we look at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport, it has three times the landmass but double the passenger numbers. There is Paris Beauvais Airport on the outskirts of Paris doing 6 or 7 million passengers which is literally a tarpaulin tent. Do we need to consider an airport in the likes of the midlands to take the stress off Dublin Airport but still give people the option to get to Dublin within an hour or 45 minutes?

I do not think so. We have about 13 airports on the island, so we are well served by airports. I would prefer to make the airports that exist more efficient and more productive. One way, for example, would be lifting the Dublin Airport passenger cap. Another would be capital expenditure the State could provide to the likes of Cork and Shannon airports that could be increased without breaching EU state aid rules. That would allow those airports to do more in terms of their terminals or runways or security facilities using capital development money from the Government. That would allow them to incentivise airlines with their own resources. If truth be told, we have enough airports on the island, but we could certainly make the airports that are there more efficient and productive.

Is the cost factor of Dublin Airport versus the other airports becoming problematic? If we look at the likes of car parking for the weekend at Dublin Airport, it is three times the cost in Dublin versus Cork, Shannon or Knock airports. There are alternative options there. What needs to be done in that regard to try to encourage more people to rebalance?

Public transport to Dublin Airport is particularly important. There has been an increase in public transport, and it is now effectively the biggest bus station in the country. We can go back to the age-old chestnut of the Dublin metro, the direct rail link to Dublin Airport. If that had been put in years ago, we would not have the issue with car congestion or the issue of carpark costs. Facilitating as much public transport as possible to Dublin Airport does alleviate that concern to a large degree.

In relation to the structure of tourism, in the last five years we have developed a local authority-led model locally where there is a tourism officer and a greater drive within the local authority. Is that working? Is it effective? Is it complementing Fáilte Ireland? Is there anything we need to do to improve or enhance it?

I will let Ms O'Donoghue jump in on this in a second. It is generally working well. The local authority having a tourism person, a tourism budget and a tourism responsibility is important because so much requires all the parties coming together and the local authority does need to be at the table.

Going back to the destination experience development plans, which we have mentioned quite a lot, the local authority is a key part of that so it has worked well. We obviously have to avoid unnecessary duplication of roles or responsibilities. Having Fáilte Ireland as the national tourism authority is important but complemented by focused work from the local authorities.

The visitor attractions the Irish Heritage Trust is responsible for are places like Strokestown Park in County Roscommon, Fota House in County Cork, Johnstown Castle in County Wexford and more coming up in Dublin. The relationships, knowledge and support of the local authorities in all those areas has been a very positive influencing factor. They bring a knowledge, they bring financial supports and they are also able to look around corners when it comes to potential obstacles. The N5 bypass in the Roscommon area is potentially going to be a double-edged sword. It will provide a much better road infrastructure to bring visitors, but then we need to work with them and TII to make sure the visitors stop. To an earlier point that was raised about the electrical vehicle and charging infrastructure, where local authorities advance an integrated approach to the EV charging model, as Roscommon County Council is, then tourism starts to derive a bit of comfort in terms of overcoming those challenges. I support the local authority-centred model, and my experiences of the local tourism offices have been terrific.

I thank the witnesses for being here today and for their contributions which have been very interesting. Tourism is hugely important. It employs 250,000 people and generates €9 billion in revenue. I have been listening to the debate and I welcome the witnesses' suggestion around the short-term letting. I hear those concerns, and I hear the industry concerns. We have had people attend at committee who are operating self-catering accommodation around the country.

I really welcome Mr. O'Mara Walsh's acknowledgment and calling out of the difference in dynamic between the urban setting for short-term letting and the rural. It is very stark here in the city. It is having a hugely corrosive impact on communities, and I am talking about the most basic level where people working in the city cannot live in the city. It has absolutely destroyed communities. One can walk through parts of the city and knock on ten doors and four-to-six of them will be short-term lets. That means teachers working in the local school, gardaí working in the local Garda station, nurses and bus drivers cannot live in the city. I welcome Mr. O'Mara Walsh's suggestion that we go ahead and get the registration commenced and make sure the guidelines are implemented in a pragmatic way. I wonder if he would go further and suggest there may even be a staggered implementation and look at the really high pressure zones initially.

I want to raise my concern, considering the importance of the tourism sector, that we are in danger of pricing ourselves out of the tourism market.

The reason I say that is because I hear it increasingly from people living and working in Ireland. They holiday abroad and take their families abroad because it is cheaper. Evidence would back up the argument that it is cheaper for them to go to mainland Europe, including flights, accommodation, food and attractions, for a week or two weeks than to spend equivalent or less time in Ireland. That is a really worrying fact so I would like Mr. O'Mara Walsh to respond to that. I appreciate that A New Era for Irish Tourism is a strong policy document and has very strong ambitions but it is primarily focused on sustainability. Sustainability is incredibly important, but how are we going to sustain it if we are not cost-competitive for our own consumers in Ireland?

Can Mr. O'Mara Walsh help us identify where the growth will come from? I know he referenced off-peak tourism. Could he talk about that? What about new international destinations? The world is in a very challenged place politically and there are a lot of tensions. A total of 32% of our numbers come from the US, which is a significant risk factor. What are the new geographic destinations we should be targeting? I am working on the assumption that the cap will be lifted at Dublin Airport. It is really important that it is. Assuming this happens, what will be the new geographic destinations?

Regarding new markets, we really have to look at Europe. We perform poorly out of the likes of Germany and France or even the bigger continental European countries. Germany is the largest outbound tourism market with about 80 million outbound visitors. We get less than 1% of that so there are real opportunities there. Tourism Ireland recently conducted a European market review, which we subscribed to and supported. There is a real opportunity to increase EU business into Ireland. We need to incentivise access into the country and make sure we have the right programme of events to appeal to them.

Let us not turn our back on the US market. We are all very aware that there is a risk factor relating to US volatility, particularly with the current Administration, but we need to deepen and defend the market. Aer Lingus is opening up a couple of new routes and new gateway destinations, so market diversification within the US is possible. Probably our best prospects involve tapping into the EU market and the British market. They are our closest friends, are on our doorstep and are easily accessible with excellent air access to the regions. There is potential there. Stimulating those markets will require increased investment from the likes of Tourism Ireland to spend budget and stimulate demand from those markets.

I agree with the Senator regarding value for money. We are all concerned about value for money. When Fáilte Ireland surveys tourists who are in the country, they still reckon that Ireland is value for money. It is waning a bit but we are still good to very good value for money. However, we are under pressure. I mentioned earlier that we are now the second most expensive country in the EU. There is not so much profit with regard to a high hotel price, the high cost of a restaurant meal or the high cost of a pint. It is largely driven by high cost inputs be they energy, insurance or utilities. There are very few millionaires and millionairesses in the tourism and hospitality sector. Ms O'Donoghue would know that from the attractions sector. Average ticket prices are €10, €12 or €15. There is no dynamic pricing. We have to be really careful as a State that we do not burden the tourism and hospitality sector with costs above inflation because that will find its way to the bill price, which puts us under pressure. I am acutely aware of it. In the past and during the Celtic tiger years, we became too expensive as a nation and, therefore, our fall after the economic crash was sharper than that experienced by other countries. We have to avoid that. There is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where businesses are allowed to make a margin but tourists obviously see good value for money. Competition involves bringing in additional energy providers and insurance companies - even competition in the banking sector. The more competition there is, the better value it is for the business to consume those products. In turn, they are able to charge a fairer price to the consumer. Undoubtedly it is complex. The old days when Ireland was the cheapest destination, such as in the 1960s when Connemara would cost nothing, are well gone. The new reality is that we are a high-cost economy and, therefore, the prices for consumers are higher than they were. Thankfully, we are still value for money but we have to keep an eagle eye on it. That sort of monitoring is so important. Regarding all those aspects about additional hotel stock or additional short-term letting beds, if we take all that stock out of the system such that demand and supply are out of sync, the price only goes in one direction, so we need to be very careful.

It is worth noting that 70% of the revenue coming into the five-star hotel market comes from US customers. It goes back to the point about potential restrictions on US customers coming. I have heard this from hoteliers in the five-star hotel market in the west of Ireland. It is astonishing how much damage could be done if that happened, and nobody is talking about it, so the witnesses might help us to get that message out.

I would have liked to get into the issues of short-term lettings, which I have raised it at other meetings, and hotel capacity. I note the witnesses' responses on that. I know other groups are looking to make submissions. We have heard others. It has been dealt with a lot but it has not been responded to adequately by Government so we will keep at it.

In my limited time, I would like to talk about cars and aeroplanes. My background would be green. I was a member of the Green Party but, unlike my former colleagues, I see the logic in removing the cap at Dublin Airport. We really need EU legislation in terms of taxing kerosene-guzzling planes and introducing short-haul flights that are electric to deal with air traffic. It is something we cannot look at on our own. They will fly somewhere so that makes the argument for us as an island. Many of them are arriving in Dublin and there are capacity issues with charging electric vehicles at Dublin Airport. However, the EU has said it will give what is called pragmatic flexibility to each state. In Irish terms, we can make an argument that we need a bit more leeway in terms of Dublin Airport because we have grid issues. That is a wider problem with regard to whether we can power AI data centres if we cannot meet our own capacity requirements. The Government should be doing a lot more in terms of the national grid.

The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation conducted a survey in 2015. Perhaps it has done one more recently. It said that, during that time, 80% of all visitors to Dublin city arrived via Dublin Airport. That is a given. In terms of the west of Ireland, specifically Galway and Mayo, the survey said that two in every three visitors, which is around 66%, arrived through Dublin Airport. They are people who are hiring cars and driving to the west. They want to do Connemara, go to Westport and maybe drop up to Sligo or go to Galway city. Given that the runway can take large aircraft, why is more not being done to for Ireland West Airport? Ireland West Airport is underutilised. That would have more capacity for electric vehicles. Others have mentioned Cork and Shannon.

As a country trying to promote its green credentials, we must be very careful in saying that we do not want to move to electric vehicles because of capacity issues and that we should continue with gas guzzlers. I have driven an electric vehicle for eight years. It is 124 KW. I have been to Belfast, Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Connemara. In some places, with a small car like that, you would need to charge up to three times for half an hour a time. What I found about the charging infrastructure was not so much the lack of availability of fast charging on the main infrastructural points but that, in places like Connemara, there were no slower chargers. Kylemore Abbey was mentioned. Kylemore Abbey does not have its own electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Clifden has one fast charger and one slow one. Roundstone has nothing. The witnesses get the picture. This is all along the Wild Atlantic Way, which we are trying to encourage people to come to. One fundamental point is missing: that the newer cars will have ranges of at least 350 km, so range anxiety does not really exist except in people's heads. US visitors are between 17% and 20% of our overall visitors and up to 30% in July. They drive automatic cars. Is there not a case to argue that we should be pushing the automatic angle of EVs with the Americans because they will feel more comfortable not having a stick? None of the EVs, obviously, has a stick.

My second question is as follows. Should we have a grant for the hotels, the tourist destinations and the short-term lets? I would have liked to get to the last. Basically, range anxiety is not an issue if you can charge the EV at your destination when you arrive at it, so it is not so much about having the commuter chargers as it is that you have enough to get from the airport to where you are staying, and then you can charge slowly overnight and have your full capacity. Should we not therefore be looking at this from a different angle? The grid infrastructure issues in terms of getting rapid chargers for 500 vehicles will be an issue but if we can get to the point where we can have a 20% charge on these big-range vehicles and then they can charge fully when they get to their destination, we can circumvent it and not have those issues. What is the witnesses' view on grants for the actual destinations rather than the airports?

The grants are an excellent idea. There is ZEVI, which other people will know more about than I do. Part of the ZEVI approach was that hotels and visitor attractions, a lot of the caravan and camping sites, all those tourism destinations, would have the charging infrastructure. If that happens and if that is rolled out quickly and expeditiously, I think it will relieve a lot of the concerns. Ultimately, however, 80% of car hire at the moment is done at Dublin Airport, so Dublin Airport is a problem. Without the grid infrastructure and without the EV infrastructure there, we will have a problem. Going back to what I said earlier, I think the car hire sector and the tourism sector are fully on board with the initial 2035 deadline. It is this idea of the mandate from 2030 that is posing us-----

It is a matter of giving flexibility to them.

Exactly, so-----

I refer to Ireland West Airport.

We should use that flexibility. If member states have the flexibility to push back on this and amend it, we should do so. As regards the likes of Ireland West Airport, I fully agree with the Deputy. It could do better. I think it has got a million passengers or so this year, which is a record number. That is really positive. I would love to see the regional airports grow. If the regional airports grow in terms of inbound visitor numbers and there is EV infrastructure at those airports, it kind of solves the problem straight away. Tourism Ireland does some good work on this, and perhaps, with increased budget, it could be ramped up. It does co-operative marketing campaigns, so it would do a deal with Ryanair or whatever whereby it would market Ireland West Airport Knock to Italy or whatever. I think all that could be ramped up. That sort of joined up thinking, I think, would work very well.

I thank the witnesses. I wish I had more time.

We have two more members of the committee to speak. We have Deputy George Lawlor first and then Senator Aubrey McCarthy and Deputy Toole.

I thank the witnesses for their forbearance and patience. I am a little concerned about the difference between the statistics and figures coming from the industry and those coming from the CSO. CSO figures, I think, indicated there was a €1 billion drop in revenue year on year between 2024 and 2025. They also indicated that, ironically, given the geopolitical situation, US visitor numbers were up and those of our European neighbours were down. In the context of strategic planning, and now that tourism is within its own Department, whom is the Government listening to when it comes to analysis of the statistics? If the CSO, our statutory agency for the collection of statistics and figures, is saying we are €1 billion down on spend but that is being contradicted by the industry, are the numbers of visitors correct for both the USA and Europe?

Second, what influence does the Tourism Industry Confederation have on route selection, or does it have any input into that? I will give the example of Savannah, Georgia, which has a huge Irish connection. I know that because there is a huge Wexford connection. Georgia Southern University has just set up a campus in Wexford and purchased a local convent to house its students, such is the level of connection. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Savannah is the second biggest in North America. In terms of visitors, Savannah is a city of 170,000 people and gets 17 million visitors a year. In contrast, Australia gets between 8 million and 9 million visitors a year. That is the scale of tourism in this area. The connections with Ireland are huge because, historically, in many instances, when you sailed from the island of Ireland in the winter, you sailed to Savannah, and in the summer you sailed to Newfoundland if you were going in that direction. That is why there are huge connections with the south east. When I flew to Savannah last year and the year before, it took 24 hours door to door to get there. The first year I flew via New York down to Savannah, and the second year I flew via Atlanta, but all in all it took 24 hours. There is huge potential in places like this in North America where there is a real affinity, affection and connection with Ireland but we do not seem to be exploiting that as much as we should. The North American visitors, as we know, have the largesse to up the numbers we require, and I can guarantee, going on the cost of everything in both Atlanta and Savannah, that they will not see Ireland as an expensive option. That is my second question.

What influence have we in that area, via the likes of the ITIC, to campaign for specific groups? The airline industry seems to have its own mind made up as to where it will fly to. I know there are various reasons for doing that but I think, given the possibilities for expansion in terms of numbers, that places like that that have that deep-rooted connection could be hugely advantageous if we could get there directly.

The simple answer is we do not have influence on determining a route. We can encourage and influence or whatever but it is ultimately the airline's choice. The good news on that is that the footprint of Aer Lingus, which is the main carrier across the Atlantic, in the States has transformed. About ten years ago there were about six cities in the States - Boston, JFK, the usual - from which there were flights into Ireland; now it is 26, and it is growing each year. I am not au fait with this but I would not be surprised if the likes of Aer Lingus were looking to the Savannah area and looking at the Irish links, the diaspora and the connectivity, and I would not be surprised if over time there were an announcement. An airline wants to make money, and if it can identify a route that will have what is called good load factor, occupancy in the seats, it will put aircraft on that route fairly quickly. However, it is all tied back to the Dublin Airport passenger cap because AIG, which owns Aer Lingus, will decide years in advance how many aircraft to dole out to Aer Lingus or BA or Iberia, and if it thinks there is a restriction on Ireland's ability to take numbers, instead of giving the additional aircraft to Aer Lingus it will give it to BA or whatever. That will mean Aer Lingus will say, "We would like to serve the Savannah route but we do not want to pull a Boston flight, so we need an additional aircraft." It is, therefore, all interlinked but the Deputy can be damn sure Aer Lingus is looking at every opportunity. It has great data so it would be able to see that the Deputy and maybe thousands of others flew from Dublin to Atlanta and down to Savannah, and it would want to join the dots much more quickly.

Also, I think the limitations of the physical infrastructure at Dublin Airport will cause a forced distribution pattern. That has to be looked at in tandem with the cap.

What about the CSO statistics versus those of the industry?

As you would imagine, since the CSO is the official national statistics office, it is the body whose data are gospel, to a certain extent.

However, there is an acknowledgment within the Department that other data sources are needed. Industry data is very scientific. Ms O’Donovan would be able to say exactly how many people walked through Strokestown Park yesterday and what countries they came from whereas the CSO data is a survey. It is a small sample, I think about 3,000 people, who are surveyed a month and out of that you extrapolate -----

Surely that cannot be ideal.

It is not ideal but it is done to Eurostat standards. If the CSO was here, it would say it was doing it to the standard across the whole of Europe. Our big argument is that, while the CSO should obviously be a very important metric and indicator, other data sources should be used. Bank data and credit card data are the obvious ones. In real time, we would be able to see how much money the Germans spent in Longford last weekend.

Are the CSO figures the only ones used?

We inform the Minister, the Department, the media and so on about other data sources. You can imagine the Department of Finance or whatever would just go to the CSO to determine how well agriculture, tourism or construction is doing. The CSO numbers in tourism could and should be strengthened.

We are obliged to provide a very short sos. Is it agreed to suspend for two or three minutes for the witnesses and committee staff to use the toilet? Agreed.

It is a case of the best wine being kept to last. Returning to the conversation with Deputy Lawlor on the CSO, the data and how it has been unreliable, what data should the Government then rely on? The decisions it is making right now are based on the CSO data. That is going to affect jobs and regional investment. It is also going to affect tourism funding.

The plans that the Minister, Deputy Burke, has for regional tourism are brilliant and wonderful but based on what I have heard through the various questions about the infrastructure – the hotels, the Airbnbs that are in rural areas; we are talking about the register, etc. – is the capacity there? Will the Minister and the Department be able to follow through on the regional dispersal?

Those are two questions and I will have another on short-term letting.

The CSO data needs to be strengthened. The Government and media will always go to the CSO for data and statistics but I think the CSO could use other data sources to strengthen its own data. The obvious gap I see is bank data and credit card data because you are able to see expenditure in real time, whether it is in hotels, restaurants, pubs or whatever. That data is out there with AIB, Bank of Ireland, Visa or whoever it might be. In other countries, as I understand it, that data is used by the relevant national statistics agency.

Why are we not using it?

That is a good question. It is one that the Senator should probably direct to the CSO. The CSO will say it is doing it by Eurostat standards but I think it could be strengthened. At the moment, we have an estimate that tourism is worth €9 billion to the economy. That comes from the CSO but the CSO numbers come from a very small proportion of tourists who are surveyed as they leave the country and are asked how much they spent in Ireland. Somebody has to think about how over the last ten days they spent €500, €1,000 or whatever and then the CSO extrapolates that out into the macro figure we are talking about.

I think someone mentioned it earlier, and my view is that the value of the tourism economy is actually underreported at the moment. We would see that the real expenditure, which could probably be obtained from bank data, credit card data and point-of-sale data, is much more valuable. One of the key recommendations in the new policy the Senator referred to is that we look seriously at tourism data and try to modernise it, improve it and make it fit for purpose. The ITIC will certainly be at the table for that. At the moment, the way we rely on data is just outdated.

Yesterday, at the housing committee, we were talking about housing planning and the reason we had the housing numbers and emergency accommodation numbers, etc., and basically the reply was we were basing it on population data that was not correct. In the same way, we are doing the tourism on CSO data that is not correct.

Yes.

Down the line that is going to have a huge impact.

To give the Senator an example, pre-Covid, the CSO reported tourism numbers in a certain way and it estimated there were ten million international visitors in Ireland every year. It changed its methodology. There was a data gap because of Covid. The new methodology came out post-Covid and it had tourism numbers at about six million or seven million. Again, that was a methodological change which shows there is a misalignment somewhere. There are better data sources that can complement what the CSO does.

Okay. Turning to Ms O'Donoghue, short-term letting is coming down the tracks. We are talking in here about it. We have had the owners of bed-and-breakfasts in rural areas and coastal towns in. If rural Ireland will lose all its holiday homes, coastal homes and tourist properties, does Ms O’Donoghue think the Bill needs to be looked at, improved and amended? Equally, the whole idea of the Bill is that those properties should revert back to long-term housing. The question, then, is twofold: does the Bill need to be amended and does Ms O’Donoghue think those properties will revert to long-term housing?

It would be very prudent to refine the legislation to take account of some of the regional differences. Mr. O’Mara Walsh has already pointed to it. We do accept that, particularly perhaps in urban environments, there is a negative effect on community and so on and that we do have a much greater degree of hotel and other type of accommodation stock. In rural Ireland, where a lot of these holiday homes and second homes are let out for a couple of weeks a year, they will not enter the long-term housing stock. It would not be-----

The Bill will have no effect on that.

I do not want to say no effect, but I certainly do not think it would have an appreciable, material and positive effect. Even in terms of the Irish Heritage Trust we have what could be deemed to be residential housing within our portfolio. It has not and will not be used because it is within heritage properties. For all sorts of reasons, it would not go to housing stock, one way or the other. There are many different examples. I suppose it is really about having the capacity to look, whether it is regionally or with specific emphasis on the types of property. I have a real and huge concern for rural Ireland in particular that we are rapidly approaching this cliff edge and if we do not have a nuanced approach, and that sounds like a very pedestrian word to use, but if we do not have early engagement and try to address all the different layers, we will have a devastating outcome. Some of this is anecdotal and has come through wearing other hats, including destination and experience development plans, DEDPs, the Association of Visitor Experiences and Attractions, AVEA, and all that. There are many privately owned and small businesses that would have been in the short-term letting stock, but faced with the prospect of a register and a lack of clarity around planning guidelines would simply opt out, if not to withdraw the property altogether. In rural Ireland, in particular, if there are no accommodation options, that means footfall may arrive eventually, but it does not stay. It reduces dwell time, and I am sorry to use the term, and it reduces spending for the wider economy. That is the problem, so we do need that nuanced approach.

It was said there is an overreliance on the US. We are looking at Davos today and we do not know what this evening's news is going to be. If there is an overreliance, though, and it was mentioned we are not appealing to Germany, France and other European markets, what could the Government do to incentivise those European countries?

As I said, there is a market diversification strategy that was just done in quarter 4 of last year. It was good insofar as it looked at new and emerging markets, the likes of the Indias and Chinas of this world, but also looked closer to home with a review of European markets. There are a lot of good actions in that. We need to incentivise air and sea access from those European markets. We have to then help the industry, first of all with new product investment to create things of scale that will appeal to those international markets. It is also about helping to make the industry as price competitive as possible. Without sounding like we are a broken clock over here, it is about helping the industry to manage its costs so the price point we are offering for the Irish holiday experience to a German or French market is reasonable. A certain segment of the market in continental Europe that does not now consider Ireland because we are deemed an expensive nation. We need to arrest that if we can.

I thank the Cathaoirleach.

Last but certainly not least before we go to our second round, we have a guest of the committee, Deputy Gillian Toole. She is very welcome and I look forward to her contribution.

Go raibh maith agat. Táim fíorbhuíoch díot as an deis seo. I thank the witnesses for their passionate and very informative contributions. I do appreciate that I am on the tail end of it, but I am going on what I have heard. I did not get a chance to read everything in advance. Like Senator Nelson Murray, I too am a proud Meath woman and the Boyne Valley is uppermost in our considerations. I am a firm believer in its potential. There has been a lot of conversation about tourism from abroad, but there is also massive potential for our own indigenous, intercounty, intracounty tourism. County Meath is sometimes classed as a commuter county but it is also, for financial reasons, classed as rural. There are fantastic festivals, and they are not necessarily always getting their fair share. I would appreciate any opportunity where things like that, county by county, can be considered in the endeavours of the ITIC.

This is relevant to two points: the dwell time and the short-term lettings. We do not have enough bed space, so dwell time is something we do not gain hugely from. There is also short-term letting. The witnesses gave some very quickfire points, and I think there were three suggestions. The witnesses can correct me if I am wrong, but reference was made to the register in place, the need for guidelines as soon as possible and planning permission. Do the witnesses have an opportunity to feed that information to the Department in a structured format? If not, why not? I presume committee records will contribute to that as well. Are there any other points ITIC would add to the short-term letting aspect?

We are at the moment conducting a report. We are finalising it and it is going to show the economic impact of the proposed short-term lettings legislation on Ireland town by town and county by county. This will be quite revealing because it will show that if we get this wrong, there will be a disproportionate impact in regional Ireland. We will be sending this report to the Minister.

Irrespective of the numbers, the request does not change. As the Deputy said, first, let us put that bloody register in place because once and for all we will have transparency over a sector that has not been regulated today. Second, let us give a fair period of time to allow properties on that register to become planning compliant. Third, let us put together a steering group of us industry practitioners, Department officials, Fáilte Ireland and local authority planning officers to make sure those planning guidelines, especially for regional Ireland, are fit for purpose. It is a pragmatic, practical solution. Nobody is walking away from regulation. We do think this sector for too long has been in a sort of limbo and it needs to be made much more transparent. Those conversations are ongoing.

Excellent. I thank Mr. O’Mara Walsh. In relation to bed space and further development of hotels, etc., throughout Ireland, I note the just transition funding tends to just target the midlands. There are other areas, including County Sligo, County Meath, as I referred to, County Wexford and other parts of the country. Do the witnesses have any contributions in this regard? Can they flag this? Are there other angles? Senator McCarthy mentioned data and its use. Does the ITIC interact with the banks?

What are the cross-links that can help improve the overall delivery, whether it is capital for the experience, the bed space or the dwell time, because it is all so interconnected?

We have the luxury, to a certain extent, of the helicopter view or the macro view, so it is more strategic rather than operational. Fáilte Ireland, which is the national tourism development authority, does have plans for each of the regions. Within that there would be metrics, and it would have a product plan for each of the regions to show what the destination drivers are. We would encourage that work because it is very important.

The Deputy is right, in that we need a combination of places to stay and places to visit. If we have that combination, then the Irish tourism proposition is in a pretty good place, but there are undoubtedly gaps. All places are not equal and all things are not equal, but where we can, we should be flexing that regional dispersal of visitors. That includes Newgrange and Meath more widely. Everything is there but sometimes there are gaps. Ms O'Donoghue mentioned dwell time. Another awful word is "stickiness" - get people to stay there. That will mean the local restaurant, local pub and local bus link will do better. We need to try everything to pull that off.

I will make a final point in relation to the cap at Dublin Airport. There are mixed opinions on that, given where I come from, which would be south-east Meath. Residents in Fingal and Meath East have been indirectly impacted by what An Coimisiún Pleanála, previously An Bord Pleanála, said was a breach of planning from 2007. This is probably more an FYI for the witnesses. There is a north runway technical group that is composed of commercial pilots and pilots who fly for leisure. They have actually presented proposals to the Minister and the Department on the operation of the north and south runways in dependent mode, which would allow an increase in passenger numbers without any change to the current operations or planning permission in Dublin Airport. That is something on which we could possibly help one another. Where are the pilot proposals from the north runway technical group? I look forward to visiting Strokestown again very soon. It was a fabulous visit.

I thank Deputy O'Toole and call Deputy Aird.

I will ask a very quick question. I come from County Laois. What plans has the ITIC, or what proportion of the budget can we get in a place like County Laois?

The ITIC is the representative group for business interests, so the national budget, if you like-----

Yes, that €5.4 million.

-----is managed by Fáilte Ireland and then a chunk of money is used by Tourism Ireland overseas. However, Fáilte Ireland manages the budget at home. Rather than a county-by-county approach, it has either regional brands, such as Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, which is where County Laois is, and would have an allocation of money towards that, or it would have what we called before the destination experience development plans. We are repeating ourselves here but, in many ways, the whole focus of tourism or tourism's great strength is its regional power. It is a regional powerhouse, and it can do wonderful things for County Laois, counties Tipperary or Offaly or wherever. Increased allocation of budgets to those areas is certainly something I would favour and that we would support. What does Ms O'Donoghue think?

Yes, I think so. The delivery mechanism at the moment is primarily through destination development partnerships, DDPs. There may be new mechanisms. I am not familiar yet because, clearly, it was only recently announced as a policy, but I would expect that we would probably see some new grant schemes and so on. It is a matter of how those are influenced.

What immediate steps are being taken to encourage more people into the tourism industry workwise? There is a shortage of labour in the tourism industry at the moment. Has the ITIC any policy or anything going forward that can encourage people into that industry?

Yes, there is lots of stuff going on. There is Skillnet, which we talked about before, which encourages people to upgrade skills and abilities. Fáilte Ireland has something called an employer excellence programme. It has a very good career development website. It works quite closely as well with the third level colleges. I was at a TU Dublin event just last week. Ms O'Donoghue mentioned it earlier but, historically, there was a bit of a perception that tourism and hospitality were kind of casual work and there were no careers there. We are changing that. Fáilte Ireland has good data on this. We are changing that perception of tourism that it is a profession and a long-term career. It is everything from revenue managers through to front-of-house staff and office staff to tour guides and people running small self-catering businesses. There is something there for everyone. There are 225,000 people working in the sector. It is the largest indigenous industry and the biggest regional employer. That is not by chance. We are doing an awful lot of things right, but the danger is that we take our eye of the ball and suddenly, future employees have gone into another sector and we miss them. The Deputy made a very relevant point.

The only reason I am asking that-----

I apologise, but I have to interrupt. I will explain why. There is a limitation on the room of 3 p.m. We also have four committee members in the room who have not gone for their second round.

Yes, that is all right.

The Deputy is very welcome, though. It is good to see him. We always try to accommodate but-----

I thank the Cathaoirleach very much. I am thankful for the money we got for the bike trail in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, but we are looking for more money. That is all I wanted to say to the witnesses. I am sorry about that, a Chathaoirligh.

No worries. We will move very fast. We might take three minutes each, which is realistically one question each for the members who are still here, if that is okay. I will go first.

I want to touch on one thing. This annoyed me enormously, and the Minister knows I am annoyed. There was a comment made in the press in relation to civil servants resisting plans to increase the cap at Dublin Airport. This came out just after the new year. Do the witnesses have an issue or concern around that? I am always speaking here about inertia where the Cabinet Minister's authority is being undermined. The reason I want to raise it is that, on this issue specifically, it is effectively a Government decision. Do the witnesses have any concern or do they share this concern with me? I know it is a tricky question, particularly when they are lobbying Government. On that matter in particular, do they feel that the officialdom of that Department has become too strong and that is why we have essentially had this issue for so long?

I think that was the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, whereas our relationship, if you like, is more with the Minister, Deputy Burke, and tourism, so I would be less au fait with it. The frustrating thing is that we have known about this Dublin Airport passenger cap for years now. It was constantly kicked down and Fingal has to sort it out; it is a local authority issue. We all knew that was going to get nowhere and we knew that legislative intervention was going to be required. It was, therefore, very welcome when the Government finally acknowledged that. To my mind, it is a bit like Michael O'Leary would say. The Cathaoirleach should have him before the committee; he would increase the ratings anyway. He would say that, once the Government acknowledged that intervention was required legislatively, it should have been done straight away. I do not know why it was not. As I said, the Minister, Deputy Burke, said the other day that something would be going to the Cabinet on 4 February. However, that will be 12 months after the programme for Government made a formal commitment to lift the cap. I presume the Bill goes to the Cabinet and then there is a period of time where it has to be scrutinised or however the process works. It is critical, particularly in the macroeconomic and geopolitical world that we live in.

Mr. O'Leary might have an idiot sale in my honour if we have him before the committee. He had a very successful press conference this morning about Elon Musk. We were watching it.

The next speaker on my rota is from Fine Gael. I call Senator Nelson Murray.

To go back to Deputy Aird's point about attracting people into the industry, I actually have good proof of what Mr. O'Mara Walsh was talking about in terms of training, including skills training, for people in the hospitality and leisure industries. In our business, we use Skills to Advance, which specifically wrote a course for us on customer service in the hospitality industry. Nine of our staff, some of whom have not even done their leaving certificate, are now qualified to the equivalent of a PLC level.

That is brilliant.

They got their caps and gowns, and we had the ceremony, and it was amazing. I would highly recommend that and to keep the funding going into that because it really is excellent for morale and everything.

I am back on the topic of short-term letting again, so I apologise. I am obviously from County Meath with the Boyne Valley and all of that. I was on the tourism board there for a good while. We would get an awful lot of buses down to the Hill of Tara. I live beside the Hill of Tara. It is great to see them coming down, but they go back up again. I really worry about this. Ms O'Donoghue used words describing the devastating impact. That is really scary. Where do we expect to get the accommodation from if some of these places decide that they are not going to go down the planning regulation side? Where are we going to get them from? We depend on that in Meath. Even though people are only coming down on the buses, they are spending a bit and going back up. We want them to be able to stay. I am very worried about that.

I do not know if we have time but another area that has not been brought up is crime and how we are tackling tourist crime. I know of the Irish Tourist Assistance Service, ITAS. Crime seems to be on the up. I looked at high-risk areas that it mentioned, including Temple Bar, O'Connell Street and Grafton Street. Another website mentioned the Cliffs of Moher and the Ring of Kerry. What are we doing to tackle that for visitors coming in?

ITAS, which is called SOS Ireland now, does brilliant work. It gets funding from the tourism industry, the Irish Hotels Federation and so on, as well as Fáilte Ireland. We are one of very few countries across Europe that have that sort of service. Thankfully, crime perpetrated against tourists is still relatively low in Ireland but, of course, one incident can grab the media headlines. Last year, at the time of the NFL game, one of the players, of all things, was mugged in Temple Bar, and it was all over the US channels the next day. It is important. Our reputation is critical. We are known as a safe, secure destination. Let us never take it for granted. I fully agree with the Senator that we should support SOS Ireland. I also go back to the Dublin task force. One of the reasons that was set up was the riots, the crime and so on. There was talk about an increased Garda presence on the Dublin streets. We have not seen that task force take shape or the actions being implemented. Tourism is part of this conversation but it is not the sole vehicle. It is impacted by everything.

Where is the accommodation coming from if some of these places close?

New accommodation typically has a fairly long lead time and requires a proactive planning environment.

I thought the witnesses would not really have an answer for it.

There is not really a silver bullet or solution. That is why I go back to the response I gave earlier, which is that we have an opportunity in the here and now. Nobody is trying to stop the regulation of the sector but how we implement it is critical.

On the short-term letting Bill, we have heard contributions from others and we will hopefully have a few more, but the Government does not seem to be mixing the two properly. The housing section is dealing with planning issues and attended the committee. It pointed out something I was not aware of, that the planning changes in 2019 meant that every short-term letting provider had to have planning compliance. That went over many people's heads. In essence, even with a nine-month leeway, people would be applying for retention. Looking at the square metreage for retention, it is over €10, so it could be €1,500 or €2,500, depending on the size or number of properties, plus getting someone in to do all the drawings. It is not as simple as just saying to send in the planning permission for a house built 20 years ago. That will hit many people, including people who have holiday homes, who might rent it out for a while, purely to keep it going, keep it ticking over and stop it from going mouldy, and there are the people who have the property next door, as mentioned at other committee meetings, who might want family to visit during the summer or at Christmas, but they let it out in the interim. All sizes do not fit into the one space. We have mentioned this God knows how many times and it is not going in. What else should we be focusing on? Obviously the numbers are hard to get, but what proportion of the self-catering industry will be decimated if we do not actually change what is coming down the road?

We are doing analysis at the moment, so we are probably a couple of weeks premature. Because it has been unregulated to date, we have to make a number of assumptions. The Government has announced that population areas of 10,000 and above will be treated differently from population areas of 10,000 and below. It has said that in areas with a population of 10,000 and above, which include the likes of Killarney and so on, short-term letting will be precluded. It has more or less said that it will be gone. In areas with a population under 10,000, it is at the discretion of the local authority when it takes the housing needs of the locality into account.

And the definition of municipal area.

If you think of a local authority planning officer who gets a planning application for a small town, which is a rent pressure zone because the whole country is now a rent pressure zone, housing will obviously take precedence. Many of those planning applications will be turned down. That is why we are saying to pause. Ms O'Donoghue is right in that we have a period before the 20 May register comes into effect. Let us pause and put that register into effect so that, once and for all, we will know how many short-term lets there are in Laois or wherever, and we will be able to work out whether we need them in that area, and should be flexible.

It is a general register, even if they are not planning compliant.

Exactly.

Does Mr. O'Mara Walsh think nine months is long enough? To me, it could be five years.

We debated it at board level last week. We thought it should be nine months at least. The danger of a never-ending period is that the register is in place but it is still a free-for-all.

At least you can target them.

We thought it would be timebound and it would be a pragmatic solution.

How does Ireland's Government spending of €280 million on supporting tourism compare with other countries? As part of that question, in Kildare, where I am from, we have St. Brigid's Day as a huge part of what we do. Newbridge Silverware has released the new St. Brigid's cross. It has become a national holiday. Let us say the Government spend is €280 million. Is extra allowed to be allocated for such national events to attract tourists?

We do not compare particularly well across Europe. I do not have the numbers to hand. We said at the outset that the sector is worth about €9 billion and the State contributes €280 million to tourism.

There is a good return.

There is a great return. That is why we argue that €20 million or €50 million more for tourism could make a material difference. There are many other factors. The Government said the 9% VAT rate was about a €560 million cost to the Exchequer. Things like the OPW budget help tourism. It is quite complex and nuanced. Certainly, we should be more opportunistic, so if there are things like St. Brigid's Day, which the Senator mentioned, we should take the opportunity. We have something called the year of invitation, which was the Gathering a few years ago, which will come back. There is an opportunity for a line item in the budget specifically for things like that to exploit opportunities. I would certainly like to see increased investment in tourism, both in overseas marketing and in industry supports and product development.

The witnesses also mentioned regional tourism. We discussed the airport cap, slowing hotel development and short-term letting. If the Government was to focus on one of those areas, what would be the major focus to make a difference in the next 12 months for rural tourism?

I would have to opt for the short-term letting legislation, its consideration and nuances. It is imminent, urgent and important. Its impact across so much of Ireland would be fairly immediately devastating. Tourism in rural Ireland is typically three months and the rest is shoulder season or off season. If businesses do not make enough money in the three months, they cannot pay their fixed costs for the nine months. What I am starting to see emerge in the planning and execution for this year and going forward, because of uncertainty around visitor numbers, the lack of accommodation and so on, is that businesses are pulling back, so instead of opening seven days a week, they open for five, or they reduce the hours. Everybody is trying not to impact the quality of the experience for visitors in our economy but it is really difficult when there is a forced distribution of scarce resources. That worries me. If the short-term letting legislation could have a deferred commencement to allow for a nuanced approach to it, it might make a material difference for tourism. That is my view, not that the others are not important.

Before we conclude, it is clear there are significant issues with the short-term letting legislation. We will consider in private session what the committee may be able to do as regards examining the legislation further and discussing it with the Department. I acknowledge the representatives from the Irish Self-Catering Federation in the Gallery. We are cognisant of this matter, which has been raised several times in the committee. We have discussed it in public session and we will discuss it again next week in private session.

We will have one for the road before we finish. Does Deputy Aird want to ask a final question?

I acknowledge everything the witnesses said. The letting issue is the one that came across today. We have got to do something about that. We will discuss it later this evening and people can attend a Zoom meeting on it. It needs to be highlighted. It is not a question of bashing a Minister or anything like that. We need to bang heads together and say this is one part of the legislation that will not work. As the witnesses highlighted, they have to do most of their business in three months of the year, whereas everyone else gets ten or 11 months. Short letting cannot be stopped in the areas in question. It is wrong to do so. I fully support the witnesses.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. I acknowledge the broad sector and the number of other organisations their organisation represents. It is hard to get around to every single issue but I appreciate very much having both witnesses here today. I look forward to engaging with them further as the year goes on.

The next meeting of the committee in public session is scheduled for 12.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 28 January.