Ireland still seen as expensive

TOURISM:TV PRESENTER and archaeologist Neil Oliver has said there is still a perception that Ireland is an expensive country to visit which may be a legacy of the Celtic Tiger.

Oliver, a guest at Fáilte Ireland’s annual conference this week, said the perception was there “right or wrong” and outsiders still remember that Irish people used to moan about house prices and there was a feeling that you would “not get good bang for your buck”.

The presenter of BBC’s hugely popular Coast series confessed that he had not been to Ireland until 2005, but since then has come 20 or 30 times both to film for the series and for personal reasons.

He cited spending a day currach racing in Kilkee, Co Clare, as the highlight of all his time filming Coast which attracts an average of three million viewers a week in the UK and is regularly re-broadcast.

He spoke in warm terms about Ireland, saying it was a “special place” being an island long before Britain became one.

“I expected Ireland to be soft and green and pleasant. I hadn’t expected the jaw-dropping spectacle of standing on the cliffs of Inishmore and watching these waves that had not touched land for 2,500 miles and breaking on the cliffs. That is an experience I will never forget,” he said.

Oliver, an archaeologist and historian before becoming a television presenter, said the Brú na Bóinne site is one of the great archaeological sites in Europe and Irish people should take consolation from their history and the “fact that Ireland has always been there”.

“If you don’t have history you are living your life like a page on a novel and you don’t understand where the characters are at,” he said.

Fáilte Ireland chief executive Shaun Quinn said the Irish tourism industry needed to “relentlessly hammer the message home” that the country was not an expensive destination anymore, a perception which he confessed had built up during the Celtic Tiger years.

The well-known travel writer and restaurant critic AA Gill told the conference that Ireland’s greatest strength was the character of its people and it could not expect to compete with hot countries in terms of tourism infrastructure.

He also raised guffaws of laughter saying that the Irish were renowned for their hospitality, “it is what you do”, but were “s***” with money.