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OPINION:The tourists keep coming and we keep taking them for granted, writes ORNA MULCAHY.

IRELAND OF the Welcomes is it? Not if you arrive in Dublin airport on one of the early morning flights from the US any day of the week. The captain wishes you safe onward journey but first you have to navigate the mob scene in passport control. You’re decanted from the plane into a warren of corridors and staircases through which passengers shuffle towards a cheerless room where there may or may not be separate booths open for EU and non-EU passengers. You can be stuck for 20 minutes or more waiting to get into the room, bottle-necked in a low-ceilinged corridor without any idea of what is going on up ahead. There’s the hemmed-in feel of the sheep dip to it.