One body, one West of Ireland

ONE body, one spirit for Clare? It may sound like a high ideal but the county’s future TDs seem to believe it is a real possibility. The West of Ireland, including Clare, should come under one tourism authority and if we tap into spiritual tourism, the county could become Ireland’s answer to the Camino de Santiago, it was suggested.

It was Michael Vaughan, president of the Shannon branch of the Irish Hotels Federation who raised the question. There is two much cross over, he believes, there should be one true authority.
“It is very important that people know here that Shannon Development is our primary agency for tourism in this area. Shannon Development will spend one third of what it spent three years ago on promoting tourism in this county in the next year because they don’t have the budgetary facilities open to them. There is duplication wholesale between Failte Ireland’s role in this region and Shannon Development and we [in this region] now find ourselves at the bottom of the pile of tourism nationally. In the last 10 years we had a decline, not just because of Shannon Airport and what we need now is radical change to the structures of tourism,” Mr Vaughan stated.
According to the Lahinch hotelier, Shannon Airport cannot sustain itself if it relies solely on Mid-West tourism. Instead, it must attract users from as far north as Mayo and the only way to guarantee this kind of business is “by merging the Shannon Development area with Ireland West to create a new region The West of Ireland”.
Dr John Hillery acknowledged his own lack of expertise in the area saying that, if elected, he would like to meet with local groups to hear their ideas not just on tourism but other areas too.  Councillor Tony Mulcahy put it most succinctly, “One tourism body, Ireland West, end of story.”
“Shannon Airport sees their role as flying in passengers; they don’t see themselves as being part of the tourism structure of the whole West of Ireland. It is critical that we have one body and everybody is integrated into that as delivering people into this country,” he said.
“One very basic reason for this is that we don’t have enough people on the island of Ireland at the moment to pay taxes that we need to collect, so we certainly need to get an awful lot more tourists in here so we can take more money off them and that is absolutely critical. I couldn’t agree with Michael more, too many talking shops, one body and that is it,” Councillor Mulcahy concluded.
Indeed there was some cross-party agreement in this area. Deputy Timmy Dooley said he believed the proliferation of small airports on the West coast is proving detrimental to Shannon’s business.
“One body and one airport. There are far too many airports on the West coast.
We are competing with the East coast, which has a much greater population and one centre, through Dublin. We have an airport in every county in the West of Ireland and we are supporting them through the PSOs (Public Service Obligation) and through various different capital investments. I have spoken out against that. I think it is wrong. I think we need to concentrate on Shannon and build a marketing platform around that,” he commented.
Deputy Dooley stressed that tourism innovation did not have to be government-led, saying he believed there was a role for leaders in the tourism field, like Michael Vaughan and others.
“We can get together. We can come up with the ideas. We have done it in the past. We can’t wait for another Brendan O’Regan to come along. There are many Brendan O’Regans in every community but we need to harness their ideas and stop waiting for a government or TDs or ministers to do it. The way we can work as a government is to effectively get out of the way of the entrepreneurs and be assisting rather than desisting or setting up think tanks or doing more of that. We need far more support for the entrepreneurial spirit that is there,” he continued.
Indeed, this might have been the spark that lit the fire in Reverend Canon Bob Hanna, causing him to leap to his feet suggesting Clare people tap into their “unique spirit” and develop a strong, spiritual tourism offering.
The Church of Ireland minister called for the development of an ecclesiastical tour incorporating a pilgrimage walk to Clare’s spiritual attractions, such as Kilfenora cathedral. He said that research had already been undertaken into a loop-walk project incorporating Clare’s links to St Senan and Celtic spirituality.
“We have a unique landscape for this type of tourism project. We should be tapping into this spirit and we could fill our B&Bs with a Camino-type atmosphere,” he said.