Official estimates of the number of jobs sustained by tourism are prepared annually, as soon as final figures for tourism performance and the annual balance of payments are available from the Central Statistics Office It is, therefore, too early to provide an outline of the number of jobs created to date in the tourism area in the current year.
The targets for tourism set in the Programme for National Recovery for the five year period 1988 to 1992 include the creation of 25,000 new jobs. At the end of 1990, estimates for employment sustained by tourism activity stood at 80,000 jobs, up over 16,000 on the 1987 figure. The target for tourism employment in 1991 is 85,000.