The notion floated by the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, that visitors should pay a levy of £3 for the privilege of visiting the Republic has little to recommend it. That "Ireland of the Welcomes" should charge an arbitrary entrance fee is not compatible with sensible marketing. Our competitors must be gleefully hoping that Dr McDaid's wish will come true.
It is the prospect of, amongst other things, warm hospitality, fine scenery and a (mostly) unhurried environment which attracts many visitors in the first place. To enjoy these supposedly free delights, our visitors must pay airlines, car ferries, hotels and guest houses, car hire firms and so on. These suppliers of tourism products in turn pay tax. In short, our visitors are already supporting the Irish infrastructure. Some countries with a heavy dependence on tourism have a tourist tax in some shape or form. That is no reason why it should be introduced here. Ostensibly, Dr McDaid appears to hope that the proposed tax would be used to replace the EU funding for tourism promotion which will be largely phased out next year. This has the eccentric effect of raising money from our visitors to pay for the costs of getting them here in the first place. The Exchequer's tax take from tourism is already running at £1 billion per annum. Somewhere out of that could be found the £20 million or so contribution from the State judged necessary to market Irish tourism abroad.
It must also be questioned whether the tax raised would be applied in the way Dr McDaid might wish. Road tax, for example, was intended originally to fund road maintenance and improvement but was immediately subsumed into the maw of general taxation. There is no reason to suppose that a tax on tourists would fare any differently. There is another tax which the Government should be looking at closely: the £5 cost of leaving the State. As air and car ferry fares come down, the tax is forming an absurdly high proportion of the ticket price. Ireland has done well out of being an open economy: our fiscal policy should encourage free movement rather than penalise people for leaving or, under Dr McDaid's mooted proposal, coming into the State.
If the Government wishes to embark on initiatives in the travel business, it might usefully consider quite a different problem. The appalling summer weather of the last three years has led to a brisk demand for package holidays in the sun. This business is now almost completely in the hands of two companies, both British-owned. They control the number of seats available so that the price-cutting which was once a feature of this industry has been all but eliminated. This is good for the companies but not so good for the consumer. It is difficult this summer to book a cheap holiday in the sun as the seats were nearly all sold before the spring. More competition in this area should be the focus of the Government's attention, rather than a tax on the people who might wish to visit us.