Óna Máire Walsh

I think we showcase the best of the country to the domestic market and to the international audience.

It's got huge economic value in terms of employment opportunities.

So we have to make sure that the right policies are in place either at local government or at central government to allow the sector to grow.

And one of the problems at the moment is that there's a view sometimes in Dublin local government that there's too many hotels.

And the evidence proves that there's not.

And outside of Dublin, there's simply not enough hotels at all.

And unfortunately, there's no pipeline of new constructions.

Well, again, in the tourism policy that the government put together, that's where the plus 50% revenue figure comes from.

I think it's plus 35% volume.

So that's visitor numbers.

And we're the only ones, as far as I know, the industry is the only ones who have actually done the number crunching as to how many beds you would need.

Yeah, in the Crow report, and that shows that we're about 10,000 to 15,000 bedrooms short of what we need to be.

And how much of that is rural Ireland?

The majority of that is rural Ireland, yeah, because Dublin has a kind of a healthy enough pipeline, but rural Ireland, and that's where we want to grow tourism revenue.

You know, as I say, it's the one sector of the economy that can really provide economic regional balance.

But we can't do that unless people have a place to stay and somewhere to rest their heads.

What's the economic case behind them?

Well, there's a strong economic case behind them.

But as you know, the government have made a recent decision to curtail Airbnbs and short-term rentals.

So that's only going to compound the problem.