Sir, - The trouble with tourism is not that we have failed to manage our tourism "industry", but rather that as a society we have yet to fully appreciate and value our landscape and the natural and cultural inheritance that it embodies.
This is hardly surprising in view of the fact that our Celtic Tiger is still a rather young cub and the glamour of all the trappings of a technological, booming economy has yet to lose that exciting smell of a new purchase.
Frank McDonald's series deserves to be read and read again, though there is the danger that it will confirm those at either end of the polar extremes, the conservationists and developers, in their not very complimentary opinions of each other.
Legal controls and restrictions may slow the current process in the short term, but they may well finally sound the death knell of our landscape in the long term. The only way forward lies in developing a broad-based understanding of what landscape quality is all about in the community at large. This is a formidable and slow task which would, however, be greatly assisted through the formulation and implementation of a national landscape policy.
Part of the process also lies in the concept of a landscape forum as endorsed by Conor Skehan and Jeanne Meldon. The Landscape Forum, convened each year since 1995 by Landscape Alliance Ireland, has demonstrated the value of developing such a partnership approach. The forum, now in its fourth year, convenes for three days in Maynooth on September 16th next and, as with previous forums, its proceedings will be subsequently published. The next step must be to convene local landscape forums around the country to provide a platform for open debate on often controversial issues.
These are small but effective steps in building an informed understanding and appreciation of the importance of landscape quality in our lives. If we succeed in translating this into action on the ground, we will build the foundations of a truly sustainable tourism industry and continue to attract and welcome visitors to our shores, visitors who hopefully will not on their return home write to tell us of their disillusion when the reality has failed to match the marketing image. - Yours, etc. Terry O'Regan,
Landscape Alliance Ireland,
Old Abbey Gardens,
Waterfall,
Cork.