The CERT report which concludes that the Irish hotel and restaurant sector will need an additional 105,000 staff over the next five years contains news that is both good and bad. The good news is obvious enough: the tourism industry is in good shape and well placed to continue its remarkable job creation record of the past ten years. Even if growth moderates over the coming years, tourism is set to become the country's single largest industry and employer.
There is good news also in the fact that tourism assets are, in the main, Irish-owned. International manufacturers locate here for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day the interests of their shareholders are paramount. If it is more profitable to shift production to Morocco or Asia, then the multi-nationals will move - as more than one Irish community knows to its cost. This pressure on Ireland to be competitive is healthy, but it is as well to acknowledge that international investment is generally mobile. The tourism industry is indigenous by definition. If a Conrad Hotel opens in Dublin or a Hilton Hotel opens in Belfast, then in Dublin and Belfast they stay - so long as they are profitable. The industry also has an added value in that it encourages economic development in remote parts of the island which find it difficult, if not impossible, to attract conventional manufacturing industry.
These considerations make the CERT report of great importance. What it is saying, in essence, is that the Irish tourism industry is failing to sustain its principal resource, the people who make it work. One in four people currently employed in the industry will leave it; a turnover which the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, rightly described as unacceptable. Job mobility is important in the building of careers, but in the case of the tourist industry far too many in the sector are choosing to make their further careers elsewhere. The tourism industry has demonstrated - with not a little help from Brussels - an admirable capacity to invest in its physical assets. The product is now of a high order generally and earns high marks from consumers. The more difficult challenge is to match this with investment in people. The industry suffers from a Catch 22; it needs to invest in training its people, but what is the point in spending money on training people who are going to leave?
In an ideal world, an industry looking for 105,000 new people would be an economic miracle-worker. The CERT report makes it clear that keeping existing staff rather than recruiting new ones is the real challenge facing the industry. The Irish Hotels' Federation has pointed the way forward with its Quality Employer Programme, which bluntly tells its membership that to survive it must set training and good employment conditions as a priority no less high than making profits. Indeed, it can be said that one follows the other: investment in human resources in a necessary part of a successful business. The lack of such investment means, ultimately, a doomed business.