Tourism is a €9.5bn industry, not just a bit of fun

It makes no sense that Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan is in charge of aviation but not tourism. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/CollinsA favoured cliché in dead-end discussions around Irish policymaking is, no matter what the problem is, to suggest that it needs its own minister or department. That will solve everything, right?

The last few weeks of the unbridled chaos that has ripped through all elements of the travel and tourism industries comes on top of more than two years of dire strategic thinking about the sector during the pandemic. These things are interlinked. One has led in large part to the other. Eamon Ryan is the Minister for Transport, as some people realised this week after he requested from the Minister of Defence that the Army be put on standby to help out at Dublin Airport. Separately, he holds a second daunting portfolio as the Minister for Climate, Environment and Communications. Technically, transport is 25 per cent of his responsibilities – maybe all of Monday plus a bit of Tuesday morning in his working week. Maybe he gets an entire afternoon out of aviation.

Martin seems a reasonably competent politician and she was on to a winner during the pandemic when all she had to do was throw around public money as compensation for Covid closures, and forget about strategy. But now she is ostensibly the main Minister for the tourism industry’s development and that can be observed by the fact that she is the one to whom the tourism agencies, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, genuflect.

Look at how responsibility for the tourism industry has been bounced around different departments over the years. In the 1980s it was part of the Department of the Marine, perhaps because we were so reliant on ferries at the time. In 1987 it was transferred into the Department of Transport. Six years later it was shipped out to the department that corresponds roughly to the one now run by Martin.

When some people regularly pointed out during the pandemic that the clumsy and strategy-free Irish policy approach being adopted towards the travel industry would lead to operational scarring for years to come, they were not listened to enough. Having a single, unified, important voice sitting at the Cabinet table might have helped.

Nigeria Nigeria Latest News, Nigeria Nigeria Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Fáilte Ireland uses Irish Open to tee-up golf tourism marketAgency says golf tourism was driver of industry recovery after last recession and is seeing strong business this year More poor souls to fleece.
Source: IrishTimesBiz - 🏆 6. / 77 Read more »

Greedy car hire companies risk going bust in long-term, warns Donohoe | Newstalk'My message to those businesses that are involved in those kind of practices is, ‘Don’t come to the Government in a few months' time looking for help when your own pricing decisions have undermined the competitiveness of your business'.' Everyone living in rip-off Ireland is at risk of going under with double digit inflation… Pascal: “don’t come asking for help, you are victim of own decisions to elect FFG “ Don't worry tourists have wised up to rent their cars just North of the Border. Car rental companies in Northern Ireland need to be setting up car rental depots at major border crossings. Tourists want value for money-not to be ripped off. Have no mercy for greedy operators. Car Hire companies have been screwing everyone for years... insurance companies have helped too. Not sure what we can do though.
Source: NewstalkFM - 🏆 19. / 55 Read more »

More turbulence in store for passengers as airline industry grapples with disruptionsSoaring demand, bottlenecks, staffing issues and Covid outbreaks are dragging down aviation’s summer take-off IrishTimes 'Turbulence ... airline' - we see what you did there. Do you think some colleagues in IrishTimes could look at the CSO numbers for Q4 2021 & the year as whole? There seems to have been an extraordinary number of unbelievably tragic early departures.
Source: IrishTimesBiz - 🏆 6. / 77 Read more »