Letters to the Editor: The volume of tourists arriving at popular destinations must be managed
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I was delighted to see Eoghan Corry’s article regarding overtourism in the Irish Examiner where he identified a growing trend across Europe from locations, towns, cities, etc protesting against overtourism. My recent visit to Rome included four- to six-hour queues for the Vatican, Colosseum, Pantheon, etc and a barrage of tourists packing the streets — and I was one of them! Not a great experience.
Eoghan was also making the case that many of these destinations’ economic development was built on tourism, and stopping tourism would be bad for them.
This is where I disagree with Eoghan — the destinations are not saying stop all tourism, they are saying stop overtourism — manage it, regulate it, allow locals to live and enjoy their destinations at the same time and protect what is fabulous for future generations to enjoy also, in moderation. This is real sustainability — the environment, local residents and visitors in harmony; the opposite of excessive tourism.
With international tourism forecast to increase to 2bn trips by 2030 compared to 1.4bn in 2018, overtourism in popular destinations will get even worse, and other destinations will become unmanageable.
In Ireland we are forecasting an increase in overall tourist numbers of 24% to 2030 from 2024, requiring 14,000 additional accommodation beds and millions of additional airline seat capacity. Some 70% of all international travellers visit a few counties (Dublin, Cork, Galway, Kerry) so 70% of the new visitors will want to visit the same locations — locations that, in peak season, are already experiencing over-capacity.
I have experienced towns with 20+ day-tripper or passing-through tour or cruise line buses disgorging hundreds of visitors into small towns for a few hours, on top of visitors staying in the same towns. Is this the tourism we want across Ireland?
Maybe it is, maybe we are happy to keep growing and reaping the increasing economic benefit from tourism — but are we having the real conversations with locals and stakeholders across Ireland, to make sure that they are all happy with these decisions, so that we don’t end up turning our backs on the “Céad míle fáilte” we are known for?
Is the future a more managed future — Newgrange limiting daily numbers, Venice charging an environmental tax, cities banning cruise ships, destinations limiting day-trippers, etc?
We can see what the future holds if we just follow the euro — can we not also have the public discussion with all stakeholders as to how we are going to manage and plan for it, as opposed to react to it when it happens?
Rumour has it that we may soon see an end to the traditional push-button radio in cars.
My first ever car, back in the mid-1960s, was an Austin Mini which came without a radio.
I remember the thrill of getting a (very basic) radio fitted to it, but subsequently some “comedian” broke off the wing aerial. This I replaced with a wire coat hanger. I then had the twin benefit of half-decent reception, and indeed something to hang my jacket on.
In the spring or summer of 1973, a young man came up to me near the Boston Common and asked me if I was ‘pro-life’. There was a protest against abortion taking place.
I saw it as an occasion to show he was a hypocrite. So, I said I had been a Marine ‘grunt’ in the war, and asked him: ‘Do you support our boys in Vietnam?’. He said: ‘Yes’, and told me he was patriotic. My reply was ‘You’re an effin' hypocrite. Supporting the war means you support the killing of innocent people’. Then, I asked him: ‘How come it’s mostly men there’? He had no reply.
So, to those in Ireland who are so-called ‘pro-life’, have you been protesting against the Zionist genocide in Gaza? What about the impending famine in West and Central Africa? What have you done about the growing numbers of homeless adults and children in Ireland? If you haven’t done anything in this regard, then ye are effin' hypocrites! Have ye adopted any children who have no parents? What about abused children? If not, then ye are hypocrites. Big time.
After the war, I was, and am, disgusted with such hypocrisy.
Freckles, sunburn, red hair, brown skin, green eyes, black skin, brown eyes, blue eyes, or pink skin. It would take some neck for us Irish to devise laws that base Irish citizenship on “colour” or the birthplace of a person’s parents. When we were in trouble, we went everywhere.
Every person born in Ireland is, or absolutely should be, an Irish citizen. Anything else soils our flag and our country. We have to have rules and they don’t exist if they are not enforced. But let’s have humane, sensible, inclusive, and constructive ones.
Immigration is not a problem. It is a challenge. Go back far enough and everyone living in Ireland today descends from a person who came here from somewhere else. From the Vikings to the Normans and way further back. And Ireland is the richer for that.
From Paul McGrath to Phil Lynott to Éamon de Valera to Rhasidat Adeleke. We have three colours on our flag and it’s only a start. We may be an old “nation”, but this is a young country.
Every citizen in this country is a member of one minority or another. A stable, successful progressive country is a patchwork of minorities. And that is what makes Ireland great. Let’s keep it that way. Onward and upward.
There is always an Irish solution to everything.
As recounted by Éamonn Ó Carragáin, in chapter xxv of Navigatio Sancti Brendani, St Brendan and his companions on their voyage: “encounters Judas Iscariot, ‘of all plotters the most wretched’ (‘Ego sum infelicissimus Judas atque negociator pessimus’) on a spot in the ocean where “his loving Saviour” grants him respite from his punishment on the island of infernal smiths, ie hell.
The respite is: “From first to second vespers of every Sunday, from Christmas to Epiphany, from Easter to Whitsun” and a few other days as well. Poor Judas begs Brendan to lengthen his respite, from vesper-time on Sunday (when, liturgically speaking, Sunday ended), until Monday morning, and Brendan agrees.
For Roman Catholic pronounced: Excommunicated, this should come as good news as it would allow, if implemented, their full participation in Sunday liturgies. And in times when elections are taking place, the excommunication could also be lifted for a longer period to allow would-be candidates (if applicable) to go-to-door canvassing without having them slammed.
Sadly, as Éamonn Ó’Carragáin relates, this act of mercy by St Brendan towards a former misguided apostle enraged the demons in hell. Because, their prince, Satan, had flogged them savagely for not returning Judas after vesper-time on Sunday, on time for his tortures.
The hypocrisy of people who wanted England to lose on Sunday, yet in a few weeks’ time will be cheering on their favourite English team in the league is mind blowing.
I don’t think it’s really accurate for letter-writer Lucy Boland (‘Abortions for any who need them’, Irish Examiner, July 15) to claim that “The only people who said that abortion should be ‘rare’ were conservative politicians who, having previously espoused anti-abortion views, saw the landslides coming and hopped on the bandwagon at last minute”.
The Together for Yes group, mentioned in her letter, published a tabloid style newspaper during the referendum campaign, in which it was claimed that legalisation of abortion in Ireland would lead to a reduction in numbers, with similar claims being made in the letters column of your newspaper, and on posters erected in the Cork area, and probably elsewhere.
Given the massive increase in abortion figures from about 4,000 in 2018 to over 10,000 in 2023, we now know such claims to be ludicrous. How much they influenced people in the referendum vote we will never know, but we should acknowledge that they formed part of the debate.