Temple Bar. Saturday. Battle formation, shoulders hunched and heads down against piercing rain, icy winds, flying litter and squads of thinly-dressed trendies yelling into cellphones. Inevitably, we collide with other bodies, in this case a thirtysomething couple, swaddled in thick coats and scarves. After an exchange of tortured smiles and apologies, they turn out to be Belgian computer programmers, ending a week-long break in Dublin and the south.
So, apart from the - eh - inclement weather, were they having a good time? "Yes", replied the man, nodding solemnly. "It is nice now to talk," he adds with the glimmering of a smile. Brief, mystified silence. Didn't they know we Irish were smotheringly friendly and chatty to a fault? "Hmm . . . Yes". Pause again, while he and his partner exchange glances. "However, we found the Scottish people to be more friendly." Lord. How was that? "Well . . . when you go into a place in Ireland, staff, people . . . they look up and then look away - if they look up at all." To illustrate, he swivels his eyes in that surly, adolescent fashion we natives have come to know so well.
It might be amusing in New York or Paris where the cities are the stars and rudeness is theatre. But in the Republic? Where, "people and spontaneity" - defined as ease of mixing, welcoming, warmth, unplanned magic moments with people etc, etc - is our unique selling proposition? Time to cop on.
It's not that we hadn't been warned. The chat, the craic, the curiosity, were always what made us different. They even made us "cool". So cool in fact that we began to fancy ourselves as being above all that aul' stuff. Like many an ageing starlet, we fell for our own publicity: world conquerors of the music, film, (River)dance and literature stakes, churning out one bestseller after another, renowned - every last one of us - for spouting Heaney, Yeats and bits of Ulysses at the drop of a hat, dreamily indifferent to the international stars fetching up at the airport, falling in love with us and craving a bit of property at Paris prices . . . Sure what had we to learn from blowins? And why should we bother ourselves with them at all?
David Rose, an English journalist and long-time devotee of the west of Ireland, summarised the new mood over a year ago: "Not quite rude, but almost; brusque; businesslike; pressed for time; keen to get on to the next customer." We can deny it no longer. Indifference to foreign tourists is becoming "the new norm", says John Dully, Bord Failte's chief executive. Indifference? How about contempt?
Village, town or city, it makes little difference; we're turning into our big city counterparts anywhere in Europe. Belfast holds reminders of what we used to be. Now, stupidly, recklessly and for the want of common sense and ordinary good manners, we are torturing the (£2 billion) golden goose to death.
An American anticipating a trip to Ireland for 40 years, finally made it last summer. For her dream holiday, she chose the farmhouse route, believing this to be the way to get a sense of the real Ireland. The outcome? ". . . A very real lack of warmth and hospitality . . . Farmhouse owners . . . had absolutely no interest in carrying on conversations other than to inquire about the time of your morning meal. It was evident that they were pleased you were there and pleased to take your money, but even more pleased that you would soon be on your way." As a parting shot, she advocated lessons on "how not to make your guests feel like trespassers".
German and Danish visitors who linger an hour over a round of Guinness and Irish coffees in a well-known pub in a Co Clare village are chucked out for "not drinking" (although no one had come over to offer another). Also from the west come tales of innocent foreigners and their children being verbally assaulted by foul-mouthed, stick-wielding farmers. In the country "that never met a stranger", a good-looking Texan with "medium-brown skin" is greeted with such hostility and sub-standard service that he reckons the Irish under-40s to be "without question, the most prejudiced" he has ever encountered. A black London tourist is detained at Dun Laoghaire port for five hours because her passport (not required under law) is out of date.
To scratch the veneer is to wonder why tourists bother to come here at all. Link, the Bord Failte magazine, quotes the views of Pierre Josse, the co-founder and editor of the respected French guidebook series, Guide de Routard, on his 40th visit to Ireland. "When you go out for dinner, you are likely to be told that you must vacate the table by a certain time to make way for another sitting. And in Temple Bar, bouncers decide whether you are a suitable customer for the pubs . . ." In B & Bs, the traditional downhome interchange between host and visitor is fast disappearing. Many of them are now arranged like small hotels to ensure total separation of guest and host-family accommodation. With tea-making facilities often provided in the guest-room, the host is relieved even of that small but meaningful old gesture of hospitality, the welcome cup of tea.
And as the same weary tourists sit in a restaurant struggling to explain to the barely English-speaking waiter that they don't want a full dinner, just a main course from the (as yet, unpresented) a la carte menu, and the waiter gazes back, uncomprehending like Manuel from Fawlty Towers, pleading "A la carte? A la carte? What dish . . .?", they're bound to wonder if this is one of those "unplanned magic moments with people" they read about somewhere.
The shortage of native hotel and restaurant workers may be attracting a charming touch of cosmopolitanism to the industry, but it brings its own problems. Language fluency is only a part of it - albeit a significant part given the prediction of catering recruitment consultant, Denis Moylan, that within five years, more than half the hotel and restaurant staff in the Republic will come from abroad.
The real issue is training, a concept still alien to most owners and operators. Just 34 per cent of Irish hotels have an action plan for training. And a plan is all it will ever be for most of them, given that only 20 per cent of those have actually allocated a budget for it.
All of which is happening against a background of explosive development in four-star hotels and holidays homes, many of which - in the view of one major German tour operator, Klaus Buhring - lack character and atmosphere and the "Irish touch". On the other hand, the service and decor in many three-star hotels can be downright depressing, a fact made no more appealing by Irish hoteliers' tendency to up prices by about 5 per cent per annum, well above inflation and making this state one of the more expensive destinations, according to one Dutch tour operator. Meanwhile, even as the great boom continues, Dublin Tourism's chief executive, Frank Magee, is warning that if current projections materialise, half the tourist accommodation in Dublin could be superfluous by 2002.
The well-travelled Belgian couple we came in with reckoned that shopping in the Republic - fast becoming a mirror image of any British high street anyway - and eating out are as expensive as London or Paris. The view is not confined to tourists. The chairman of the Dail Committee of Public Accounts, Jim Mitchell, got the lash of industry tongues last summer when he asserted that "to bring your family out to eat once a year would break you". In fact, the view has been endorsed by the Minister for Tourism, Jim McDaid, who has received "far more complaints about standards in the fivestar areas than about unapproved accommodation". These include tales of "£10 being charged for two cups of coffee and a light biscuit and £8 for soup and a roll".