Óna Máire Walsh

We see the Hughes family as well investing in the Grace in Westport.

But remember, that's renovations.

It's not necessarily new builds.

It's not necessarily expansions.

We did a report with Crow Consultancy, who are a respected economic consultancy.

And they've worked out that regional Ireland is short about 10,000 to 15,000 hotel bedrooms over the next few years if we want to meet those 2031 targets.

So those investments, like you say, in Westport or Killarney are very, very welcome, but they're well short of what we need.

So we would argue that there needs to be some sort of stimuli or some sort of incentives to encourage hotel investment in regional Ireland.

Otherwise, we're really going to struggle to grow tourism into the regions.

Well, remember, construction costs are very, very expensive.

Planning delays obviously push construction way down the line.

And ultimately, the return on investment...

for those hundreds of millions of euro that you're putting into a site, aren't there in regional Ireland.

So by all means, in peak season, in tourism hotspots, there's a good return on investment and you can secure good rates.

But remember, a hotel, the 200 bedrooms of a hotel have to be sold every night, 365 days of the year.

And investors and developers are not seeing a return on investment in regional Ireland based on the costs that they have to put up front.

Yeah, there's a bit of a pipeline and that's encouraging.

But that pipeline was jeopardised just last week or just this week, earlier this week, when Dublin City Council decided to double the development levy for new hotels.

So, you know, nothing can be taken for granted.

And, you know, tourism is a good thing for the country.