The authorities in Northern Ireland have decided to re-open talks with their counterparts in the Republic about staging a joint bid to bring the Tour de France to the island of Ireland in coming years.
The North's Economy Minister Conor Murphy MLA had said while talks around the joint bid for the Grand Départ were ended last year, because of the absence of a Stormont Executive, he now wanted to explore what a Tour visit here could achieve and had already taken steps to re-open talks.
"In July 2023, discussions on a potential All-Ireland bid to host the Tour de France Grand apart were suspended largely due to the absence of an executive," he said during ministerial question time.
"Since coming into post, I have instructed my officials to reopen that dialogue. As part of those deliberations, the cost of the bid would have to be weighed against the benefits.
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"I do note that in 2014 when the Giro d'Italia Grande Partenza was hosted it generated around £2.5 million in economic activity, £12.7 million in tourism impact and around 227,000 visitors."
Philip McGuigan, a Sinn Féin colleague of Minister Murphy and an MLA for the constituency of North Antrim, as well as being a racing cyclist, has now raised the Tour de France visit several times since the Northern Assembly was reconvened.
He noted there was a £2.45 benefit to the North for every pound spent on the Giro's visit. Mr McGuigan added the upside on the spend on the Giro included £13 million in additional tourism spend, £12 million free advertisement worldwide to over 56 million viewers.
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He asked Minister Murphy, if he agreed with him that "events potentially like the Tour de France or the European soccer championships brought to Ireland have a really positive benefit for our economy, tourism and business in general".
Mr Murphy replied that while securing such events "of course does require some upfront investment", and the Northern Executive was currently financially "challenged", most of the large sporting events, such as a Tour visit, "would tend to have a long lasting" economically beneficial outcome.
"Tourism is a growing market and a key part of our industry here," Minister Murphy said, alluding to the type of boost a Tour visit - given the global audience Ireland north and south would be exposed to - could bring.
He now looked forward to "doing the analysis and rejoining the discussion" on bringing events like the Tour and Euros to Northern Ireland, which had been "parked as a consequence of having no executive". This would reveal the estimated outlay and "what we can hope to achieve" from it.
Late last year the Irish Government said it had ended its efforts to host the Grand Départ of the Tour de France after its proposed partners in the North said they could not afford to continue with the proposal.
The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media made it clear the bid had come to an end, though Minister Catherine Martin TD (Greens) had wanted to host three stages of the race.
“The Tour de France is the biggest cycling race in the world and, during 2022, Minister Martin engaged with her counterpart in Northern Ireland, the then-Minister for the Economy, regarding a potential joint bid to co-host the opening 3 stages of the race, the Grand Départ,” the department said.
“Departmental officials engaged with counterparts in Northern Ireland and established a project group to scope out the details of a possible bid. In July 2023 the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland wrote to my Department to advise that it had decided to cease work on the potential for a joint bid."
