Visitor numbers - We must try to build on positive year

The number of overseas visitors to Ireland increased in 2011 for the first time in four years.

Visitors were up by 7% on 2010, but they were still well below the record figure for 2007.

Arrivals from mainland Europe increased by 10% and those from North America were up by 8%, while those from Britain increased by 5%.

It would seem that much of the credit should go to the Government’s initiatives early in the year to improve tourism. Those initiatives included the lowering of VAT from 13.5% to 9% within certain tourist-related areas, the scrapping of the €3 travel tax, temporarily easing the visa restrictions on long-haul visitors, and halving PRSI on employees earning less than €370 per week.

The big impact was not just the spending of the extra visitors, but also the 6,000 extra people employed within the tourist sector during the year.

It is significant that the cutting of taxes in tourist-related areas actually helped the economy. Yet the Government’s overall approach has essentially been to increase taxes in other areas.

The year 1981 features today in the State papers being released under the 30-year rule.

Midway through 1981, Fine Gael and Labour came to power, and one of that government’s first acts was to introduce an emergency budget in which the VAT rate was increased from 10% to 15%. This set a trend for those two parties in power throughout most of the next six years.

Yet the economy got steadily worse and things only began to turn around in the late 1980s after a new government mixed the cutbacks in services with cuts in taxation. Are we witnessing Fine Gael and Labour making the same mistakes again?

Tourism in Ireland was undoubtedly helped by US President Barrack Obama’s visit and by the enormous publicity surrounding the successful visit of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Irish Tourist Industry Confederation warns that tourism must grow between 5% and 10% this year for the viability of many businesses to continue during the current economic crisis. New air routes into this country are due to open next year.

There is clear potential for further growth in tourism during 2012 on the back of a number of high-profile events such as the Eucharistic Congress, the Volvo Race’s return to Ireland, and the high-profile American football game between University of Notre Dame and the Naval Academy at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin in September.

There should also be prospects to gain a spin-off from the Olympic Games in London, and there could be some potential from Ireland’s appearance in the European Championships football tournament. Europe will be watching.

After playing in similar tournaments in Germany and Italy in 1988 and 1990, there were distinct increases in tourists from those countries, due largely to the enthusiastic sporting behaviour of Irish supporters.