The Belfast Agreement has obvious benefits for the tourist industry, North and South. The Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, gave a telling statistic yesterday when outlining the prospects for the 1998 season. In the four years before the 1994 IRA ceasefire, Dr McDaid said, Ireland attracted 42,000 visitors to the lucrative conference business. In 1995, we attracted 82,000 visitors of the same category. The prospect of a strongly supported agreement will usher in a most positive environment for promoting tourism. This State is on track to attract 6,000,000 visitors by 1999, generating £2.25 billion in foreign exchange earnings and sustaining 120,000 jobs directly. And yet Dr McDaid was prepared to concede yesterday that all is not plain sailing. For example, we are faced with the remarkable and unwelcome fact that Bord Failte is facing into the current season without a chief executive, an international marketing director or a director for Europe. Part of the problem is that able people in the State-sponsored sector may be easily persuaded to leave by the greater rewards possible in the private sphere.
There is some evidence also that senior civil servants are exerting an influence over the State-sponsored bodies in their remit which does not encourage risk-taking, let alone an active entrepreneurial role. This is a somewhat difficult area to assess. The taxpayer will not welcome risk-taking that is reckless and the permanent civil servants are right to guard against that. However, it was the Sean Lemass vision that the semi-states should be allowed a measure of manoeuvrability that was inappropriate in the civil service but necessary to encourage a vibrant public sector. Successive governments have tended to skirt this issue. The result is that the civil servants have filled a vacuum created by the politicians' desire not to make mistakes. This hands power to where it does not belong. Dr McDaid drew attention to another problem for tourism which deserves more attention. Not all growth is to be welcomed. The proliferation of holiday cottages in some areas is not driven by demand but by a favourable tax regime. Sometimes the density creates an ugliness that is at odds with the essence of what Irish tourism should appear to be: easygoing and relaxed. Even more fundamental to the success of the industry is the traditional quality of our welcome. Dr McDaid said this asset could come under pressure if we become complacent about its integral importance in the product which we sell. Letters to this newspaper and anecdotal evidence have given worrying indications that something we have always taken for granted - that most of the time the Irish welcome will be genuine and warm - can no longer be so regarded. Perhaps no other quality makes a holiday in Ireland different from that practically anywhere else. Dr McDaid was right to warn that this precious asset must be preserved if our current success is to be maintained.