Rising costs begin to bite tourism

It employs 265,000 staff and is worth over €9 billion a year to the economy, but rising costs in the tourism sector mean it is losing competitiveness

Visitors at the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin Picture: Getty

Paul Gallagher doesn’t have to look too far to find a group of people that he believes could make a big difference to how much it costs him to run his business.

As managing director of Buswells, the hotel across the road from the Dáil, he and his staff are in regular contact with the country’s 158 TDs. If they were all running companies, he said, Ireland wouldn’t have nearly as big a ...