Vol. 105 No. 9
I move:
That a sum not exceeding £30,000 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1948, for a Grant-in-Aid of the Irish Tourist Board (No. 24 of 1939).
Within the last year I see that the Tourist Board has purchased a number of hotels throughout the country.
Not in last year.
Does the Tourist Board propose to manage these hotels directly?
That matter was discussed here upon the Bill which was introduced last year. The Tourist Board acquired certain properties, which are being developed, but it transferred those properties to a company called Fáilte, Teoranta, which, in fact, manages the hotels. The Tourist Board itself does not manage hotels. Fáilte, Teoranta, is developing the properties with a view eventually to a public issue of its shares. They would regard it as undesirable to make that public issue until they have fully developed the properties.
Surely the House did not anticipate that when they were passing the Tourist Bill? This rather strikes me as creating a new machine that we did not anticipate and therefore did not authorise, that they could create an organisation and directors and boards of management of which we were totally unaware. At the time, we were setting up a different kind of machine altogether, not setting up a machine within a machine.
It is a temporary device for dealing with certain properties which became available during the war years and which the board considered it was desirable to acquire for the particular purpose they had in mind.
Will the House have any guarantee that the board will so control these hotels and their management with regard to efficiency in every respect that the money voted by this House will not be wasted?
I should hope that they will eventually show a profit on their disposal.
Will the board, on behalf of those managements, have to give a return to the Minister with regard to their trading?
The accounts are published to the Dáil.
