Policy Proposal number 1.1.3 of "People, Place and Policy - Growing Tourism to 2025" stated that the State's investment in overseas destination marketing will be externally evaluated on a regular basis in order to ensure the optimal use of the Government's tourism budget. Action number 8 of the subsequent Tourism Action Plan 2016-18 states that my department will arrange for an independent evaluation of Ireland's overseas tourism marketing expenditure, and the findings of this evaluation will be shared with the tourism industry.
Following on from this, the Economic and Financial Evaluation Unit within DTTAS (a constituent part of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service) has initiated work on the evaluation of overseas tourism marketing expenditure. The evaluation will be carried out under the established system of Value for Money and Policy Reviews and will entail a full analytical assessment of the efficiency, effectiveness and rationale of the expenditure. It is expected that the evaluation will be completed by the end of this year.