The tourist industry has recorded another year of growth, according to figures released yesterday by Bord Failte. The industry now sustains one in twelve Irish jobs. Overseas visitors left behind £1.8 billion in the economy in 1999. This is a remarkable achievement and Bord Failte says similar growth may be expected in 2000, not least because of the acceleration of the peace process in Northern Ireland.
However, not all the indications for the future are positive. The Germans and the French no longer consider Ireland to be fashionable and the Germans also consider an Irish holiday to be poor value for money. Continental tour operators specialising in Ireland have complained bitterly about Ireland's attitude towards litter which is, in short, that litter bothers only fussy Europeans. We are now paying the price for this mistaken and short-sighted view.
Ireland has for many years been successfully sold to continental Europeans as the "green island". An environmentally-friendly country created the fashion for Ireland in the first place among people living in the Ruhr Valley or industrial France. They came to Ireland to find what they no longer had at home. Now they are finding the green island lacks respect for its environment and are voting to stay away. This is a self-inflicted injury for which we are paying dearly. It does not help, of course, that Irish prices and continental European unemployment have risen simultaneously, but it remains true that the Europeans would buy an Irish holiday if they came to the green island they fell in love with in the first place.
Bord Failte's chief executive, Mr John Dully, sounded another warning when he said competition for foreign tourist had now reached the "gladiatorial" stage. A casual perusal of the travel sections of international newspapers and magazines shows an extraordinary clamour for attention from countries which, directly or indirectly, compete with Ireland. With EU marketing support considerably reduced, the Government and the industry must find the resources to get the Irish tourism message across. There is no better way of doing this than by ensuring that the basic product is sound and appealing. This is the importance of addressing the litter problem.
Devolution in Northern Ireland and the peace process can only help the tourist industry in 2000. It is impossible to calculate how many potential visitors were put off the notion of an Irish holiday over the last thirty years because of international publicity surrounding particular acts of violence. The peace dividend in the case of tourism is no less incalculable, but it is bound to be substantial. The challenge for the industry, north and south, is to market the island as a whole and to take the measures necessary to recover the green island image which, though tarnished, is not irretrievably lost.