Sir, - In his piece on tourism's success and the problems it brings (The Irish Times, January 4th) Jim Dunne quotes Kevin Shannon of Shannon Tours as wondering if having six million visitors may not be undermining the quality of an Irish holiday.
As one of the committed small army of people who helped lay the foundations of our presently thriving tourism industry through Bord Failte's overseas marketing programmes, I have to say that this realisation has been rather slow in maturing. I recall, as long as a dozen years ago, raising this question of mass tourism and its possible future effects at a full meeting of the home and overseas Bord Failte family at what was regarded as the biggest eyeball-to-eyeball session ever undertaken.
I raised the issue on behalf of a number of people who shared my concerns at the possibility of going gung-ho for a "numbers only" approach and I did so almost naively by stating that in all the reading and research that I had done on the tourism business I could recall no occasion when the tourism industry as a whole had sought the permission of the Irish people to make of their legendary hospitality and generosity a marketable product. I recall indicating that it was at least injudicious of us, and at most high-handed, to presume that we had a licence to offer these - at the time, almost unique - qualities on the open market without the say-so of the people who possessed them.
I recall I got a rather mumbled, almost dismissive response. Years later I witnessed a Bord Failte future plan for tourism being grabbed by one of the parties in our present Government and used as the principal plank on its general election platform, with success.
I realised then that the worst fears of our small group of concerned Bord Failte folk were about to be realised, probably much sooner than any of us dared realise. Is it any wonder that there are now increasing concerns for the endurance or even the survival of our famous "failte" when a country as small and compact as ours has suddenly to deal with numbers of visitors far in excess of our own population?
I was fortunate to work for a time under the director-generalship of Tim O'Driscoll and drew much inspiration from his eloquence on the matter of tourism in general. I am confident in my own mind that he would not be in agreement with the current Government-driven demands for the tourism industry.
I cannot help thinking that it has all got to do with what the Belfast poet Michael Longley refers to as Ireland's new ice age of greed. - Yours, etc.
Tim Magennis, Springhill Park, Killiney, Co Dublin.