Call to scrap €10 departure tax

The representative body for the Irish tourism industry has urged the Government to scrap the €10 departure tax in the forthcoming budget.

In its pre-budget submission, published today, the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC) warns the most pressing priority for the Government in the current economic climate is to restore Ireland’s competitiveness.

It urges the “avoidance of additional charges, fiscal measures or new regulations that worsen the competitiveness of tourism”.

The confederation also argued that Ireland’s overseas marketing budget must be maintained to avoid losing market share. In particular, it said the UK must be targeted to address the decline in visitors from that market to Ireland.

It described the €10 tax as “a barrier to travel, an unnecessary disincentive to tourism and a move in the opposite direction to many other EU member states”.

“The calamitous fall in UK visitors, down by 25 per cent in August and down by 16 per cent year to date, is largely blamed on the tax,” it said. “Only more of the same can be expected unless there is early relief from this punitive measure.”

Finally, the confederation called on the Government to address the shortage in rental cars. It called for the introduction of a scrappage scheme to allow people to trade in older cars against former rental cars. “This would be self-financing due to the VRT and VAT revenues generated by the sale of ex-rental fleet cars,” it said.

The ITIC said there were 7.4 million overseas visitors to Ireland last year, with almost half of them coming purely for holiday purposes.

The revenue generated by overseas visitors was €4.8 billion, with domestic tourism contributing a further €1.5 billion, resulting in atotal revenue in 2008 of over €6.3 billion.

The ITIC said an estimated 171,000 people are employed directly by 18,000 tourism businesses in Ireland and a further 86,000 jobs are supported by the industry.