Tourism Promotion
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-13
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Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath

Last year was a bumper year for tourism and it is a big challenge to replicate that. However, we have to look at the evidence and the facts. Some 12% fewer seats came into our country because of the airport cap. That was a very significant challenge for the tourism sector. That will not be the case for the winter ahead. I think there will be approximately 9% more seats in the winter ahead, which will provide capacity for well over 1 million people to come into our country. This will provide a huge amount of additional opportunity.
The plan that we will hopefully launch in early December will show how we are going to grow revenue sustainably and grow the number of visitors coming in, which is critically important. We will also outline career pathways as well as looking at extending the season from St. Brigid's Day right out to Halloween. There is a huge amount of opportunity in those areas.
We will have a very exciting culinary strategy looking at food and beverages. I am going to do that on an all-island basis, which is important, working in co-operation with our colleagues in Northern Ireland. That is a huge opportunity, particularly for markets, like in Europe, which are under pressure in terms of how they view the authentic offering from artisan food producers and distilleries right around the country. We have a lot of opportunity there. I will raise the other issue of rail with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-13