FIANNA Fail in government will consolidate all the components of tourism into a free standing Department of Tourism.
The party's spokesman on Tourism and Trade, Mr David Andrews, told the Oireachtas Select Committee on Enterprise and Economic Strategy that one of the problems with the tourism industry was being spread over so many departments.
The Government, he said, did not believe in the tourism industry, or in what tourism could be and will be. For far too long the tourism industry has been regarded as a kind of Cinderella within the economy. Its success had not happened because of Government policy but in spite of it.
"I believe that the time has come when government must take a much closer look at the industry, at how it worked and how it is developing. This is not to denigrate the Operational Programme for Tourism, but to stress that the tourism industry must not be seen to be marginal, but central to employment and industry as a whole."
There had been deserved praise for Bord Failte, particularly with respect to its development of the Tourism Brand Ireland. That initiative was a good one, though not without its teething problems.
Bord Failte had shown itself to be flexible and energetic when it came to promoting Ireland. However, he wondered if it was satisfied with its present structures.
The director general of Bord Failte, Mr Mall McNulty, in his presentation to the committee, said it had become evident that there was a need to relaunch Ireland as a brand. The industry was performing well. Last year Ireland performed six times better than the European average.
Ireland had also become fashionable, with films being made here and over four million tourists a year. It is expected that by 1999 Ireland will be attracting six million visitors a year.
That brought its own problems for a small State. Bord Failte's role was to attract the most valuable tourist, in order to maximise the benefits and try and move them around the country, so that all communities could benefit.
The new brand was developed because there was a "perception gap" between what people abroad believed Ireland was about and the reality, the views held by those who had visited the country.
The brand was developed to overcome that, to sell the idea of the emotional experience of an Irish holiday. It was a case of telling people abroad what we in Ireland know to be true and then building loyalty, so they return.
