Tourism Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

I welcome the work that has been done in that area, but I want to encourage more of it, and I want to encourage it to go beyond the marketing. In particular, tourists travelling North and South still face poor public transport options. If I tried to get public transport from Mayo to Belfast, it would take me hours upon hours, and I would nearly be in New York by the time I would be in Belfast. There is much to do there. Other issues are the disjointed visitor information and the lack of integrated ticketing for travel passes. There are some basic things that we can get right. The continued neglect of rail links, greenways and co-ordinated transport planning undermines the potential of the natural pairings of the campaigns that I mentioned earlier, such as the Wild Atlantic Way and the Causeway Coast Route. There is a lot more to be done in this area. Structures such as the North South Ministerial Council are underused when it comes to tourism co-operation with real economic impact. I believe that is where the future growth of our island will be.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13