"We've done well in life and we're just looking for a nice girl who wants us for ourselves, and who doesn't see a £1,000 bill stamped on our foreheads." So says Mr Robert Tipton, a real estate agent from San Francisco, who is in Dublin this weekend in search of the cailin of his dreams.
His experiences with American women haven't always been happy.
"My wife dumped me because I had $3 million and the other guy had $6 million. Mind you, after paying the alimony, I'm worth considerably less than $3 million."
He and a dozen other American men are guests of Irish Sweetheart Tours, an agency for American men who are "in love with the natural charm of Irish women".
They have been arriving in Dublin over the last two days where they will stay for a week before moving on to the matchmaking capital of Ireland - Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare. There they will be able "to meet country girls as well as the more sophisticated city girls".
"Most of us here have been married before," Robert explains, "so we don't want the same heartache of getting married and giving our hearts to someone and then getting them ripped out of our chests. "We were brought up to think that we'd have one lady in our life, but when we went out into the world, it didn't happen that way. We never had the idea of making the woman a slave - we just wanted an equal partner in life who we can cherish," he says.
