SO Bord Failte might be losing its shamrock; not necessarily a bad thing. It is a reassuring conceit but a baseless vanity that foreigners know that the rock is somehow Irish. Most foreigners probably think we have an incomprehensible devotion to clover and have no idea of the shamrock's symbolism with St Patrick and the Trinity, about which they are probably equally ignorant.
People come here because - they have heard it's a nice country, though it is probably no more beautiful than many other countries in Europe. If they come back, they do so because of the Irish people.
We are going to have to ask hard questions about the nature of Irish tourism in the near future. The unparalleled growth in prosperity in western Europe over the past 25 years, with greater and greater wealth finding its way to a larger population with more and more leisure time, means Ireland will become accessible to all sorts of people who have already exhausted the bus tour possibilities of France, Norway, Britain, Spain. Next stop, Ireland, in three days.
Unspoilt yet Amenable
A week or so ago, I was in west Cork, one of the most wonderful corners of Europe, made so not least by its inaccessibility. Clean waters, intelligent, efficient, friendly people and bad roads ensure this part of the world remains unspoiled yet amenable. Or does it? We visited the lighthouse at Mizen Head, which has been transformed from a marker of an iron bound coast to a spectacular tourist development.
Its new role has been achieved with taste and restraint, the tour guides such as Sean O'Connell are excellent, and the setting is quite spectacular; a heart stopping path along the cliff edge, to a walkway over the stomach heaving gorge, and then to the lighthouse and dwellings beyond.
These structures, home and workplace to the lost generations of lighthouse keepers who kept vigil through the intolerable loneliness of decade upondecade of wild and abominable winters, were engineering marvels.
Everything about Mizen is worth restoring and celebrating - the hardship of the builders and the keepers, the courage required to do their jobs, and the quite stunning scenery; homicidal rockfaces dropping hundreds of feet to a wild and churning sea, gannets gliding through the spume, tilting a wing here or there, and on a clear day, a coast stretching in and out, to an eternity in all directions.
The day we arrived, a coach tour of tourists from England was making the same journey on the tiny single vehicle track to Mizen. The huge coach laboured at five miles an hour towards its destination, forcing oncoming vehicles to reverse to where they could edge off the road to make room. When the coach finally reached Mizen, most of the tourists within seemed content to sit in the sun eating ice cream and didn't bother visiting the lighthouse at all.
This was a vision of the nightmare tourism which you can see any and every day throughout the summer in Paris or London people with more time and money on their hands than they know what to do with, spending both eating ice cream and cola and crisps in strange cities and staring blankly and blindly around them.
They could be in Pisa or Padua, Perth or Portumna. It is all meaningless. They gaze with inoffensive and uninquiring eyes, and see nothing. For all the good they are doing, they might as well be at home, their brains plugged into virtual reality machines.
Irreparable Damage
No doubt there is a redistribution of resources so people in the remote areas they visit are able to get their hands on the money which has been brought from centres of greater wealth; but in the meantime, such tourists do great and almost irreparable damage to the places they visit.
Generally, not in terms in litter - most other Europeans are far more conscientious than we are - but more damagingly, in terms of perception. Nobody goes to Mizen to see 50 or 60 coach class tourists with coach class brains sitting round eating ice cream.
What to do? Who knows? We can't give tourists exams to see whether or not they are bright "enough to come to Ireland. We can't increase prices simply as a screen, because the first people to be excluded would be the "Irish themselves - we remain one of the poorest countries in, Europe. It is a trap; tourism inevitably destroys that which, it purports to cherish.
Still, we should be grateful for the remoteness of so much of Ireland - too remote even now for the majority of coach class tourists; but not, alas, too remote for unhygienic tent tourism which seems to be running out of control in west Cork. When we were there last year, the wonderful dunes at Barleycove bore signs declaring, No Tents, No Caravans. But this did not stop campers or caravanners staying there.
This year, there was not even a sign forbidding camping or caravans. And it is not just that Barleycove is simply ruined by the presence of this itinerant population, who if they were "travellers" would unquestionably be moved on by the county council. The dunes have been turned into vast open air toilets, with excrement everywhere and soiled lavatory paper trapped in the grasses through which children romp and roll.
Law Enforcement
The days of this kind of impromptu, park and poo where you bike tourism, are over everywhere. Whatever we have which is special has to be protected by law and the enforcement of law. A mere sign saying No Camping means nothing, unless Cork County Council - or whoever - is prepared to compel obedience.
No doubt this requires the kind of rigorous action towards holiday makers which doesn't come easily to Irish people. We prefer to offer welcomes rather than warnings, and to embrace visitors rather than evict them.
But we really have no choice, otherwise our tourism industry will be reduced to squads of the brain dead alternately eating ice cream and then toddling off behind the dunes; and the motif of Bord Failte would not be the trefoil of the shamrock but stools, adorned with the armorial bearings of used Andrex.