The heatwave this weekend provides only a brief respite from what has been, weather-wise, a dismal Irish summer. Many readers of this newspaper must have blinked in disbelief last Wednesday when reading that outbreaks of sunburn had been reported among dairy cows in Cork and Tipperary. Apparently, depletion of the ozone layer means that, even in a dull summer such as this one, there can sometimes be enough ultra-violet radiation to scorch the animals' sensitive udders.
The following day, we reported a survey by US weather researchers, published in the respected scientific journal Nature, which seemed to confirm what many people have long suspected: that the weather is, despite our experience over the last 48 hours, actually wetter at weekends. The researchers examined rainfall patterns over the Atlantic between 1979 and 1995. As expected, rain over the ocean was unaffected by what day of the week it was; but there was more rain at weekends over the heavily populated eastern seaboard of the US. Seemingly, human activity reduces rainfall. Logically, this ought to mean that working at weekends might ensure better weather, but this would rather defeat the point of the exercise.
News items such as these are a welcome source of wry amusement; but, after the wettest and dullest July for 10 years, they offer little comfort to those whose summer holidays have been marred by rainy skies, or to those sectors of the tourist industry which depend on the domestic market.
Meanwhile, foreign holidaymakers continue to flow into the country in healthy numbers, for this sector of the market is much less sensitive to climatic vagaries. Foreigners do not come to Ireland for fine weather, but for a mixture of other attractions - landscape, culture, heritage, traditional music, pubs, fishing, golf, etc. Not least, they come because the Irish have a reputation for warmth and friendliness.
Unlike the weather, these factors are mostly within our control - and there are two areas in particular where vigilance is essential. The first was raised at a recent Dail committee, which heard that litter was a principal cause of complaints from tourists. This subject has also featured prominently in recent letters to this newspaper, notably from an Irish resident of Finland who wrote of "litter, litter everywhere" being a dominant topic of conversation aboard a holiday charter plane returning from Dublin to Helsinki.
The second area of concern is that some of the reaction to the current influx of asylum-seekers and immigrants threatens our image as a people with a ready welcome for outsiders. Last Wednesday, for example, a report in the Guardian spoke of the Republic mobilising "police, legislators, diplomats and freight companies to stop a flow of Romanian immigrants before hysteria slides into xenophobia and kills a national myth: the tourist-board slogan Ireland of the Welcomes."
In the prevailing climate of thriving overseas tourism, these may be straws in the wind. But we should not ignore them. We are still, in the main, a friendly people. Our land is still green and beautiful. But it would be unwise to assume that, like the weather, these things will always be with us.