Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is additional funding of €5.8 million for Tourism Ireland, which is about promoting the entire island to overseas visitors, including to our US, GB and European markets. I am targeting funding towards supporting the regions to ensure benefits of tourism as spread as widely as possible. In the budget, I announced I have retained funding that will allow Tourism Ireland to continue its major marketing campaigns overseas to ensure visitors continue to be attracted to holiday in Ireland. The funding I have retained for Fáilte Ireland will continue to work in the area of recruitment and retention and to support businesses where the recruitment and retention of staff continues to be an issue. Fáilte Ireland also has funding to support domestic marketing. This week we will publish the tourism strategy which puts emphasis on that domestic marketing as well because we need to increase that from the point of view of sustainability. On the €5.8 million we are discussing here, there is €2.25 million going to the Wild Atlantic Way ten-year anniversary. There is €730,000 going to the St Brigid's Day off-peak market. There is €1.6 million for Ireland: Home of Halloween. The inland cruise and sustainability promotion gets €250,000, the ferry access promotion gets €500,000 and there is €500,000 for Ireland in Germany. The Deputy can see where it is about promoting the island of Ireland, but he will see the domestic market feature heavily in the tourism strategy that will be published this week. It was agreed at Cabinet yesterday.