Many people from south of the Border have been spending long periods in the North recently over the talks. How many of them, and citizens of the Republic generally will be up North for holidays or weekends or even the odd day journey? Thus making a contribution of another kind. Admittedly, the currency differential is daunting, but that goes, too, for continental journeys.
The thought came again to mind in dropping in to the Northern Ireland Tourist Board's office in Nassau Street, Dublin. The array of pamphlets and calls to go-and-see is formidable. Once you have looked you are bound to be tempted. You would be hard put to choose if you went only by the photographs in all the brochures and booklets, for they are, without exception beguiling to brilliant. Naturally, some areas get, or seem to get, most attention. They are the Mournes, The Antrim Coast and the Western Lakelands. But the tourist people manage, even, to bring to life the towns of Banbridge, Lisburn, Lurgan and Portadown, calling the area The Linen Homelands, and informing us that the flax flower has been cultivated in Ireland "since the Celts arrived in the first millennium BC". An odd way of putting it, maybe.
Not to be outdone by anyone, there is a caption to a photograph of Cross, Round Tower and a boulder or two: "find learning and adventure, tranquillity and beauty in Ireland's Celtic and Christian heritage." You get useful maps too. One "The Ulster Way", mainly for walkers with a long list of accommodation, nevertheless has a useful relief map. "The Way, you'd like to know, is over 560 miles long and the 114 stopping places include hostels, B and B's, guesthouses and hotels.
Armfuls of colourful stuff you get free. But at 25p each they also sell probably the most striking postcards seen for some time, produced by The Ulster Card Company. Unusual is a shot of the Wishing Arch, the last of the White Rocks outside Portrush, with Dunluce Castle in the background and headlands on towards the Causeway; some unusual pictures of sections of the same Causeway, and, for a touch of another reality a wall painting of huge size from the Shankill Road: "For Peace".
Don't think you can patronise the North with talk of the superiority of the scenery of Connemara or Kerry or wherever. They have it, too.