Four or five years ago, I was invited to deliver the main address at an Irish Hotel and Catering Institute conference. It came on foot of a lengthy article I had written called "Frosty Fáilte", suggesting that we were well on the way to over-pricing, under-training and generally scowling ourselves out of the international tourist market, writes Kathy Sheridan.
I struggled against mankind's natural resistance to delivering sweat-making public addresses, or to undertaking hours of extra research, or to rising at dawn to make it to UCD for 9 a.m., or to punching very hard the institute's PR person, who seemed convinced that I was hogging all to myself a hot scoop that would land the conference on the nation's front pages.
Anyway, I got there on time, made the interminable speech, hung around for questions and didn't punch the PR. My reward, mystifyingly, was a book about the Chinese triads, called The Dragon Syndicates. All became clear when during the presentation, our host laid unnatural emphasis on the word "dragon".
In other words, a hospitality organisation had gone out and spent about €30 on a joke at an invited guest's expense. Oh, how they laughed . . .
Not I. But I've never ceased to admire that fabulous sense of humour. Like a few weeks ago, when I urgently needed directions from an (Irish) hotel receptionist. "You better," she pronounced after long moments of hair-twiddling angst, "go and ask the lads in the bar."
Or last year when I signed a chit for a single, spartan room-service dinner, which turned out to be someone else's lavish dinner bill for two. Okay, my fault, but surely it's just a matter of sorting out the mix-up? "Legally, it's yours," snapped the receptionist. Or when a reader writes to say that he has just paid €6.50 for a litre of Tipperary water and €3.75 for a small black coffee in a Dublin restaurant. Or over €13 for two (lukewarm) cappuccinos, a piece of carrot cake and small mineral water.
The alarm lights have been flashing for years, in particular above those poorly run, fantastically over-priced, mid-level places.
A correspondent points out that pre-starter salads, olives, peppers and bread are routinely laid on for continental diners, at no charge. A restaurateur retorts that the cost has to be factored into the menu prices. Well, we know that. The point is that that even with those small touches that make one feel warm and welcome - imagine that? - the final total will still be well below that of its Irish peers.
Four or five years ago, they could dismiss all this as dragon talk because the surveys hadn't yet begun to support it and the euro hadn't begun to tell its tales. But CERT, the State training body, produced research in January showing that half our overseas visitors were critical of prices charged by mid-range restaurants, in particular. Among the unhappiest were the Germans - the very market on which we're currently setting our hats.
But that old sense of humour rears its head again in the industry's routine response to criticism. This is usually in the form of a demand for yet more marketing funds. So the natives are ripped off on the double: once when we eat out, and again when we're asked to fund the tourist shortfall that results from the rip-off.
Lately, the sector has begun to blame "overheads" for the escalating prices. Wages, they insist, have risen enormously. I know one €50-a-head restaurant that paid its waiting staff £5.50 an hour in 2000. Three years later, it pays €7 an hour. Spot the difference? And €7 an hour is considered to be at the high end.
In the meantime, with fewer Irish adults - surprise, surprise - prepared to work for such wages, the slack has been taken up by non-nationals, who now make up about a quarter to a third of hotel and restaurant employees. Hotel & Restaurant Times refers to a Co Wicklow hotel where an Eastern European woman was being paid €3 an hour as an accommodation assistant and her husband €4, to work as a kitchen porter. Both had visas, but "for some reason", notes the writer, "their employer was constantly putting their work permit applications on the long finger".
There is a notion that low rates are boosted with tips, that the hefty "service charge" is split equally between the workers. In some cases, all of it goes to the workers, in others, only a percentage of it. Some see none of it. Generally, cash tips are pooled, but even then, owner/managers have been known to take a slice for themselves. The trouble is, the customer has no way of knowing (short of whispering very obviously with the staff) how the divvy-up is done and whether the ghastly sommelier gets the same cut as the life-enhancing waiter.
The solution is to have a statutory requirement to state clearly on every bill the establishment's policy about what happens to service charges. That would be simple enough, surely?