Loophead Tourism annoyance at Late Late bed-night request

LOOP HEAD Tourism chairman Cillian Murphy has expressed his group’s annoyance that RTÉ’s Late Late Show asked them to supply 230 bed nights, which would have included breakfast and activities, in order for the group to appear on the Friday night talk show.

 

The Clare Champion contacted the RTE Press Office on Tuesday morning for a comment on the development but they had failed to respond at the time of going to press on Wednesday.
Just last week, Loop Head won an Irish Times-organised competition and was deemed to be the Best Place to Holiday in Ireland.

“We were asked could we supply a prize for everyone in the audience. I’d say in the space of half an hour Ailish Connolly and a few more of us had put together approximately €14,000 worth of a prize. It would have been an overnight stay, including breakfast, an activity and a trip to Loophead Lighthouse.

“Given the nature of the small community we have, it was going to be split up between an array of accommodation, activity providers and restaurants. No one business would have taken a huge hit,” Mr Murphy explained, adding that the re-opened Kilkee Bay Hotel had offered 40 to 45 bed nights.

However, the figure achieved by the voluntary group was deemed insufficient. “We were told that we needed to have 230 prizes. We had worked off there being up to 95 people in the audience. The 230 figure put it out of our league.

“We’re a small community of business people. To access 230 bed nights is a big ask but it was never a case of us being not prepared to do the work.
It would have worked out of between €25,000 and €30,000 worth of a prize. We don’t have that kind of money,” Mr Murphy stated.

The Kilkee and Kilrush restaurateur said that it was his understanding that if the voluntary group had come up with the required figure, they would have been invited onto the chat show.

“That is as we understood it, though it never got to that point because we couldn’t come up with the numbers. We had to come up with the prize first and then the discussion would have moved on to who was going to talk,” he outlined.
He felt that RTÉ should have ran with the item if they felt it was worthy and not placed a premium on the Loophead Tourism representatives featuring on The Late Late Show.

“Here was an opportunity for a good news story from the public service broadcaster. There was an opportunity to put a successful community effort up in lights and say ‘this is what can be done when you pull together in the middle of the worst recession in the history of the country’. That’s a real good news story and we were very disappointed that there was a price put on that, which we couldn’t afford.
It was never going to be about whether we did the work or not. We just couldn’t afford it. That price tag was too high,” Mr Murphy explained.

“We’re very upset at the idea that we let this opportunity slip through our lack of work. Anyone that thinks that doesn’t know how hard we worked to get where we have,” he concluded.