NEWLY APPOINTED Minister for Sport Leo Varadkar said yesterday his department intended to use the opportunity of the London Olympics next year to boost tourist numbers here.
Plans are well advanced to attract extra visitors who would like to supplement their Olympic experience with a side-trip to Ireland.
“We are looking at things that we can do with visas, to make it easier for people who are visiting Britain to make a short hop, if you like, to Ireland, before or after the Olympics,” said the Minister.
“There is a commitment in the programme for government to improve the visa situation and make it easier for people who want to visit Ireland to do so, and we’re working closely with [the Department of] Justice and Alan Shatter on that,” he said. Citizens of such rapidly developing countries as Brazil, China, India and Russia require a separate 90-day visa if they want to come to Ireland as well as the UK, but moves are under way to remove this obstacle.
“We have a number of teams who are actually going to use Ireland as their base: the Hungarian water polo team, for example, and some of the synchronised swimming teams are going to use the National Aquatic Centre at the sports campus in Blanchardstown as their base.”
The US synchronised swimming team has chosen the aquatic centre as its pre-Olympic training base for the games, the department said.
The squad of more than 20 swimmers and team officials is basing itself in Dublin for three separate periods: a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament, a pre-Olympic training base camp and then for its training base throughout the Olympics in August 2012.
The UK Paralympic swimming squad has also signed up for a week’s training at the centre later in the year, while the Hungarian and UK water polo teams will use the aquatic centre for a training camp and two international matches in June.
A high-level co-ordinating group, chaired by the department, was established in November 2009 to explore opportunities and develop initiatives across the arts, cultural, sports and tourism sectors from the London games. The group has met seven times to date.
Another opportunity under consideration is the 100th anniversary next year of the sailing of the Titanic, which is seen as having “major potential from a North/South perspective, with its historic connections to Belfast and Cobh”.
