You would want to take with more than a pinch of salt the idea that our bad weather - well, variable, if you like - is a real tourist attraction for other Europeans. After all, so many of us have simple concepts of a good holiday: sun, a long sandy beach just outside the hotel, nice shady pine trees under which to sit reading your papers or book, with coffee and other drinks to be had at a wave to a waiter. And maybe, just maybe a wood to explore nearby or a small mountain to potter around on - for exercise, when you tire of the sea and sand.
(From a report in this newspaper on Thursday we learn from Bord Failte's general manager for Europe, Mrs Orla Branigan that, of course, European tourists coming here expect no such scenario. They like the food. They like the welcome they get from the people, nice golfing facilities and the "much improved infrastructural facilities". As to the people, a French couple said, nostalgically, after a visit, "Ah, le pub Irlandais." For on their first night, slightly put out by the volume of sound coming up to their bedroom from downstairs, they descended to remonstrate. As they went into the bar, someone came forward, asked them what they were having, and the French couple were sold - converted on the spot to this warm informality. Ah, le pub Irlandaise).
All in all, said Mrs Branigan, the revenue figures from Europe should be up about 9 per cent this year. There is no suggestion that bad weather - meaning rain and wind - actually draws tourists in, but rather that it doesn't interfere with their calculations as much as we sensitive creatures think. Tom Barrington, former director of the Institute of Public Administration, in fact did go so far as to write in one tourist publication a few years ago that the rain driving in gusts through a Kerry mountain pass - or words to that effect - was a fine tonic and an addition to the scenery.
Advertising to Germans, as seen in their conservative press, certainly doesn't recommend our weather, but gives prominence to golf, to fishing, to the beauty and even bleakness of cliffs along the western coast. The last outpost of Europe, so to speak. Now, in this off-season, they offer cheap weekends at "mini" prices. They mention our big and small towns "more than a thousand years old" and yet "schwingend jung". You can translate that. They recommend Irish music in pubs and on the streets. Ireland "will make a new person of you".