While the Ring of Kerry is hugely popular with tourists, the money they spend does not reach many local farmers, so how can we address this?
ON AN UNEXPECTEDLY sunny August morning, in the blink-and-you-miss-it village of Fossa outside Killarney, is an armada of holiday coaches and hire-cars. Faces, imprisoned behind glass, belong to people in a state of happy anticipation. The one-day circuit of the Ring of Kerry that these tourists are embarking on, is a much anticipated highlight for most visitors. But what many of those in the passing cavalcade won’t have realised is that their itinerary is very predictable.
For coffee and Kodak moments it will be the Kerry Bog Village on the north coast. Lunch will be in Waterville followed perhaps by a whistle-stop tour of Daniel O’Connell’s home at Derrynane. Afterwards, one and all will head towards Killarney. Here it will be a fair bet that the morning’s trend will continue as social interactions remain confined to tourist industry employees.
Later, over dinner in their Killarney hotel, most of the Ring completers will feel happy in the knowledge that pursuing the well-worn, coast-hugging circuit of Iveragh has somehow shown them the best the peninsula has to offer. But is this really the case? Is our hospitality structure of urban accommodation, supported by mostly “drive-by tourism”, providing the best recreational experience? Can the present model in which tourists mostly view the countryside and its living communities through a vehicle window, maximise the revenue potential of the Irish landscape?
Kerry born Dr Eileen O’Rourke of the geography department at UCC (University College Cork), has recently co-ordinated a study of the upland landowners on the Iveragh Peninsula and she believes the answer is a firm ‘no’. She says that local communities benefit little from the south-west’s huge tourism industry.
According to the BioUp study, funded by the Science Foundation of Ireland, Iveragh’s spectacular scenery and the well developed tourism in nearby towns should make it easy for this region to tap into revenue from the hospitality industry. Yet the study found that “only 17 per cent of the surveyed farmers had diversified into tourism-related businesses and the income generated from same is, on average, well below 25 per cent of total household income”.
Rural bed and breakfasts were found to be in sharp decline mainly because of intense price competition from hotels. A 2004 survey found that of the 1.8 million tourists who visit Kerry annually, “only 1 per cent opted for farmhouse accommodation”.
So what about the long-standing and much hyped Government and EU agri-tourism initiatives aimed at bringing visitor spend into low income regions?
O’Rourke believes that agri-tourism has, in the main, failed for Iveragh as hill farmers prefer to supplement their income with off-farm employment, mainly in the construction sector. “This is leading to a withdrawal of intensive land management practices and, since farmers are the custodians of our natural and cultural heritage, this simplification of farming is likely to have negative implications for tourism,” says O’Rourke.
She believes that the policy for returning the Iveragh uplands to the wild makes recreational use of the countryside by tourists more difficult.
“Our study found that farm diversification is little more than an abstract policy concept that has a rather low uptake on the ground; even though the Iveragh Peninsula is a high tourist destination with spectacular landscapes.”
O’Rourke says that while only 26 per cent of those surveyed felt that farming alone could provide an acceptable standard of living, respondents described the seasonal nature of tourism, the capital investment necessary and the need to become a marketing expert as obstacles to deriving additional income from the hospitality industry.
But these are rapidly changing times. Jobs in construction are drying up. Hill farm incomes are in steep decline and the single farm payments come up for review in 2013. So isn’t it time for farmers to reconsider the potential benefits from agri-tourism?
Neilie O’Leary, chairman of the IFA Hill Committee and a member of the BioUp study steering group, fears for the future of rural communities in places such as Iveragh and echoes O’Rourke’s views: “Farmers are the custodians of the countryside but traditionally they have gained little from the tourism industry.”
Upland agriculture, he believes, faces a bleak future of falling commodity prices, subsidy cuts and lack of off-farm employment opportunities leading ultimately to land abandonment and rural depopulation. He is critical of government policy, believing “that the closure of the REP scheme was particularly damaging because it took away important income from rural communities. It was a scheme in which the countryside was maintained in an environmentally sound way that made it attractive for tourists.”
But O’Leary does welcome the “Walks Scheme” through which farmers are paid to maintain official walks that cross their land. This scheme has alerted farmers to the benefits of tourism and also allows visitors back into the heart of the Irish countryside. This, says O’Leary, is just a start.
“Farmers are entering an area requiring skills that are unknown to them when they diversify into tourism – so you can’t expect them to do this without support and training. So the new County Development Partnerships should fund farm diversification,” says O’Leary who would like a scheme for restoring old houses and barns, “with their brilliant brickwork”, to create income and employment and provide farm accommodation for tourists.
O’Rourke also believes the Kerry hill farmers face enormous problems because of current policies. She says the REP payments were a critically important safety net for farmers. “It is difficult to understand the withdrawal of these subsidies since farmers are increasingly being defined, not as food producers, but as countryside managers,” says O’Rourke. “There is now a need for more targeted payments based on defined goals aimed at transforming uplands in less favoured agricultural regions into highly valued environmental landscapes.”
It is now evening and the coaches and hire cars are safely parked in Killarney. Overseas tourism may be down this year but on the streets there is little sign of recession. Hotels have dropped their rates with the result that large numbers of Irish and foreign holidaymakers are ambling languidly around the town or queuing outside Mac’s restaurant and Murphys Ice Cream shop. Others are popping into the Laurels and Danny Mann pubs, safe in the knowledge that afterwards they can walk to their hotel.
Even to the casual observer it is clear that Kerry tourism is increasingly an urban phenomenon. Dragging these holidaymakers from their comfortable bar stools and four-star hotels to sample the breezy but hugely rewarding attractions of the countryside will be a formidable challenge. Yet “if the Iveragh hills are ever abandoned”, says O’Rourke, “it would mark the end of a way of life and we will have lost an important part of our natural and cultural heritage.”
Tourists lured by animal attraction
THE BIOUP STUDY says that a major barrier to the economic development of Iveragh is the lack of entrepreneurship and the failure of institutional support. Yet some landowners have managed to overcome these obstacles. Local farmer Brendan Ferris's sheepdog demonstrations at Kells Bay have proved a winner with tourists. Each morning in the tourist season Ferris demonstrates how dogs are used for upland flock management.
The Kissane family's innovative adopt-a-sheep programme has proved a winner with Irish and overseas visitors. A sheep can be adopted for €45 a year and the "adoptive parent" can visit the Kissane farm for free. The goal is to preserve the heritage of mountain sheep, in Iveragh's scenic Moll's Gap area (adopt-a-sheep.ie).
