I am glad of this opportunity to speak on tourism, unlike my good friend on the other side of the House, Senator Manning. On the last occasion, quite a number of Opposition Members contributed to the debate.
I come from County Kerry, where tourism has been to the forefront for many years. Since the early part of this century, Killarney was the place to go. It was known worldwide in song and story. The jarveys and the lakes of Killarney are part and parcel of that. I am often asked why Kerry is so popular with tourists and I always recall the beginning of tourism in Killarney.
Our tourism industry has built up reasonably well over the years, although I have faults to find with the people running it. There are three or four different categories of accommodation but they are regulating themselves, rather than Bord Fáilte doing it. They are self-regulating and everyone is trying to provide better accommodation than their neighbours. Ordinary bed and breakfast houses have now reached a standard comparable with any hotel in Dublin. They provide good sized en suite rooms at the height of the season for £18 a night. However, this is where the trouble arises, as I have said in the past.
Many people from rural areas, more so than people from Dublin, do not book holidays but tour Ireland, stopping wherever they like. They go to the tourist offices, which are very helpful and have a computerised system. They check the computer to see who has vacancies for that night and then ring the owners. That is fine but they charge the owners a fee of 10 per cent for providing a service to a person who might not turn up. It is a bit high-handed that when one is charging £18, or £16 in the low season, one has to give £1.80 per person back to Bord Fáilte. The tourist does not pay for that, which is quite unusual. In my experience of other countries, when one books in a tourist or information office one pays the fee. It is not deducted from the price one is charged in the hotel or guest house. Our system is wrong and should be changed.
It drives me wild to hear city and county authorities talking about putting a charge on tourism. What do they want to do? I would welcome some charge on tourism but it should be at the point of entry. It is ludicrous to talk about levying a charge for entering every county. That would drive people away because it would cost £150 to travel to every county in Ireland if they all put on a charge. I support the idea of a one-off service charge for tourists on entry to the country, which would go to the main tourist body and be distributed throughout the country to help tourism.
I do not like the idea of county councils getting involved in tourism. There has been a great deal of talk about this lately, with veiled mentions in Government documents of councils becoming increasingly involved in tourism. They should be building better roads rather than sticking their noses into something they know nothing about. This is happening in my county, where the county manager is setting up a team to look into tourism. He and his officials are looking at ways to promote tourism in County Kerry, which must be the greatest joke ever. They do not have to promote it – all they have to do is to provide what we are looking for, such as good roads and proper signs. These same people in the county councils go out early in the morning to take down unauthorised bed and breakfast signs, without any warning, and do not return them. This happened little over a year ago in my town. Ordinary people put up nice clean bed and breakfast signs but the council stated they were unauthorised and it did not know who owned them. Council lorries went out and they took down every sign in the place. It was very high-handed and it has not happened since.
This is the reason I say county councils are not helping tourism. If they were, they would ensure stone walls are not built on the ways to our beaches. This is happening within five miles of my home. A stone wall is being built across a road because the man claims he owns the road. This often happens when people of other nationalities – I do not want to say foreigners – move here. They assert their rights more than Irish people would. Over the years we have accepted people wandering over our land and farms. We do not put emphasis on it. However when ownership is transferred to a person from another country, barbed wire is erected and the owner stakes out his or her boundaries. They will stake out their boundaries through a beach and as far as they are allowed and suddenly one cannot cross it.
I want the councils to look at these matters. They should consider these issues and whether a law is being broken. However, they will claim it is not a matter for them but for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform or the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources, or that the owner has the right to do it as he or she owns the property. Over the years, people have wandered all over Ireland unrestricted. To go to half the lakes in Ireland – and I do not want to be parochial but this is particularly true in my part of the country – one must trespass on somebody's land, but nobody will bother about it. When ownership changes to a person other than an Irish person, that owner has a different attitude and barriers and barbed wire boundaries go up. I may be speaking in a veiled manner. I do not want to mention any person or place but the problem exists.
I find fault with how the country is sold. I do not wish to be overly critical of Bord Fáilte but as I have stated before, if Bord Fáilte did not exist the same number of tourists would come to Ireland. Only recently I was on a short trip to Norway and we met the Irish community in Bergen which was headed by a man from Dublin called Liam Lawlor. He said we have forgotten about them. There are many Irish people in Norway and there is no way for them to come home to Ireland without first flying to Copenhagen. He said they like the old sod and they like to support our airlines. However no Aer Lingus, Ryanair or other Irish carrier flies to Oslo or elsewhere in Norway. He asked me to take this message home and point out Norway on a map to Bord Fáilte. They maintain there is a huge potential there.
A year ago the Canadian-Irish people told me that we have forgotten and do not care about them. This has happened. It is not enough to open an office staffed by a couple of people and place a sign in the window stating "Bord Fáilte, Irish Tourist Board". It is not enough for Bord Fáilte to throw some of the biggest parties in Europe. Three or four years ago, Bord Fáilte won an award for being one of the best tourist boards in Europe. Many people from various organisations, particularly from newspaper organisations, came to the Skelligs Hotel in Dingle. I said to some of the people from the foreign newspapers that it was great that Bord Fáilte had won the award and asked how it had won it. I was told it was because Bord Fáilte throws the best parties for the press. I am critical of Bord Fáilte. It should pull up its socks and do the business properly. Up to now it has not done that.