Sir, - I read Minister Enda Kenny's article on tourism in Ireland (February 18th) with a mixture of amazement and incredulity. True to form, the Minister seems satisfied to trot out the latest figures on the employment and revenue generated by the industry.
However, the point of my article (February 5th), to which the Minister was responding, was that if the figures are good, this has come about, not because of, but in spite of, the present Government. Tourism will never develop if the Minister continues to treat it as a mere "feel good" appendage of Government policy rather than, as Fianna Fail believes, a central chapter of overall strategic planning on funding and encouraging job-creation and economic performance.
The point of my article was that the Government must wake up and take a closer look at how tourism is developing a rapidly changing role within the Irish economy. These days, the industry provides not just supplementary income, or temporary jobs, but new and sustainable jobs that have to be promoted and encouraged by the Government, working in partnership with the private sector.
I do not agree that the present Government is fulfilling this role. The Minister cites Bord Failte's new marketing strategies and his adoption of the operational programme which Fianna Fail introduced when last in Government. As important as these policies are, they must be underpinned by support of the niches which make up the sector. Aside from the initiative on resorts, a Fianna Fail idea that was carried into the Budget in 1995, none of the present Government's Budgets have given encouragement to investment in the industry. The industry is expected to develop on its own, the Minister to take credit where none is due.
I do not make any apology for referring to what the Minister, refers to as "an old favourite" stomping ground", the question of the national conference centre. As I stated in my article, an estimated £30 million is lost every year as a result of Government inaction.
it is easy for the Minister to blame the European Commission for this delay. However, the reality is that the delay has been caused by the Government itself. Before December, 1994, a number of private proposals were submitted to Bord Failte, acting on behalf of the Department of Tourism. However, in December, 1994, the Government changed the criteria and as the RDS emerged as the "favoured son" of the new regime, some of the original applicants felt that they had a cause for complaint. it is the examination of this complaint, viz. the critique of how the Government ran with this idea after they came into office, that is causing, delay.
The Minister is irritated with, me for highlighting his mismanagement of this issue, and at his lack of an integrated strategy for our tourism industry. My concern is that the Government is not looking at the industry from the bottom up, that it is ignoring the people who are trying to develop the industry on a day-to-day basis, and as a recent report suggested, that it is ignoring the conditions and pay for those who work within it. Far from having a "fundamental role" in tourism, the present Minister has relegated his role to the glitz of promotion from "on high" without support for those who work on the ground. It is this air of unreality that is causing concern within the tourism industry.
Over the past two years, I have met countless organisations and individuals involved in the industry; and for all the Minister's personalised remarks, I have been listening to what they are saying. The message from them is far from the self-congratulatory tone of his article. It is one of a real concern that unless Government develops an integrated strategy to develop tourism, the industry will be in a chaotic state within the next five years. Hence the point of my article: Fianna Fail's commitment to rescue tourism from the margins of Government policy and to place it at the centre of both the funding and planning of all Government policy on enterprise and employment. - Yours, etc.,
Fianna Fail Spokesman on Tourism and Trade, Dail Eireann, Dublin 2.