THIS PAST WEEK, a reported 27,000 US tourists came to our shores and descended on Dublin for the opening fixture in the college football season.

Wherever you went around the city in the days leading up to the showdown between Florida State University and Georgia Tech, the presence of these tourists was strongly felt.

This was even more so on gameday itself, with College Green being shut down to traffic to play host to ESPN’s College Gameday show and a fanzone. It would be great to see us shut down College Green for big matchdays at Croke Park or for the FAI Cup Final for similar fanzone experiences. 

If 27,000 Irish visitors were to make the journey in the opposite direction, they would be subject to a 6% state-wide Tourist Development Tax in Florida. If they were to visit Georgia, they would be met with a 8% state-wide Hotel/Motel Excise Tax Rate. The Georgia state-wide tax was specifically introduced to generate ring-fenced funding for the maintenance and update of road and transport infrastructure.

But in Dublin, overseas tourists pay no tax on their hotel stays.

The Government’s own Commission on Welfare and Taxation recommended the introduction of such a tax, and in January 2023, Dublin City councillors supported the introduction of just a 1% levy on tourists which could generate up to €12m per year to put back into our capital city.

At the Labour Party’s insistence, the current controlling agreement on Dublin City Council includes a commitment to work towards the introduction of a Hotel Tourist Tax. However, this cannot be done without national legislation giving local authorities this devolved power.

When this was put to Tourism Minister Catherine Martin, she responded that such a move would not be straightforward and would need “a thorough assessment”. Now, more than 18 months later, her Department hasn’t so much as produced a page of assessment, never mind a thorough one. 

According to the CSO, 6.3 million overseas visitors came to Ireland in 2023. An update for June of this year found 669,500 overseas visitors came to Ireland that month, up 8% for the same month the previous year. Dublin City Council estimates that 2 in 3 tourists spend all of or part of their stay in Ireland in the Dublin City Council area.

The problems this could help to solve

Tourists contribute significantly to Ireland’s and Dublin’s economy.  The college football this past weekend was estimated to generate €115m alone. Nobody will dispute the jobs and revenue this creates – yet influxes of tourists can also generate significant issues, as has been evidenced in major cities such as Barcelona.

Across Ireland, but in Dublin particularly, people cannot find affordable housing. Prominent sites across the city that could have been used to build housing to increase supply have been used to deliver hotel and visitor accommodation instead. This reached such a tipping point that I, along with other councillors, fought for strict criteria surrounding the overconcentration of hotel developments in parts of our city to be included in the recently adopted Dublin City Development Plan.

Major cultural and nightlife destinations have also faced closure in recent years, only to be replaced by hotel developments. This is not to mention the significant number of private housing units that are illegally being used without appropriate planning permission for AirBnBs and other short-term lets again catering to tourists instead of people looking for permanent housing. 

Dublin needs investment for the people who live here and the people who visit. Dublin needs a tourist tax, not only because of the significant revenue it could generate to reinvest in the city but also to ensure that there is a public gain outside of the economic data fed to us by the tourist and hotel lobby.

There are numerous ways this initiative could be implemented. For example, Amsterdam charges a 7% levy on hotel stays, in Berlin it’s 5% and in Vienna it’s 3%. In Paris, you are charged a different rate depending on whether you are staying in a 3, 4 or 5-star hotel. In some tourist destination in Croatia, for example, there are different tourist tax tariffs based on off-peak tourist times and the high-peak summer period.

Instead of actually investigating these possible options or how a hotel tourist tax could be introduced, Dublin City Council has been met with silence from central Government.

With a General Election expected within months, the introduction of this tax is an issue that the Labour Party is clear on and wants to see introduced.

Darragh Moriarty is leader of the Labour group on Dublin City Council and a general election candidate for Dublin South Central