REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT BREAKFAST HOSTED BY BORD FÁILTE AND THE NORTHERN TOURIST BOARD
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT BREAKFAST HOSTED BY BORD FÁILTE AND THE NORTHERN TOURIST BOARD, LOS ANGELES
Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo i bhur measc inniu. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur bhfáilte chaoin.
May I say what a great pleasure it is to be here this morning. That this event is being jointly hosted by the tourist boards of Ireland, North and South, is further evidence, if such were needed, of the remarkable changes that have been happening in Ireland in recent years. Changes that make Ireland an exciting, dynamic, vibrant and hopefilled place to visit.
And you don’t just have to believe me. People from all over the world are voting with their feet. The number of tourists visiting Ireland has increased by 129% in the past ten years, making Ireland the fastest-growing tourist destination in the European Union - a remarkable achievement. We have seen the number of American visitors alone double in the past four years.
This, of course, is great news for employment and for the economy in Ireland, and we are always pleased to welcome visitors to our country, particularly from America. Butwe are also very conscious of the reasons why people visit Ireland - our beautiful and unspoilt environment, the warm welcome of our famously friendly people - and, in tourism as in many other areas of life, we in Ireland are doing all that we can to ensure that as we develop and look to the future, we take with us all that is best about our past - protecting our heritage while developing to the fullest - our potential.
We have always had a special welcome for visitors from the United States to Ireland. The links between our two countriesare deep, close and warm - forged through centuries of to-ings and fro-ings between us. Many, many millions of Americans regard themselves as Irish - many by ancestry others in spirit and there is hardly a family in Ireland that doesn’t have someone belonging to them in the United States.
These old ties of family and friendship have been greatly augmented in recent years by the increasing numbers of American companies doing business in Ireland. Our mutual success in the new fields of information technology and electronics have, in particular, brought people from this state into contact with people in Ireland.
And California is, increasingly, becoming an important tourist market for us. Last year, for example, one in five American visitors to Ireland came from California.
Might I add, of course, that this in no small part down to your contribution as members of the media and the travel trade for which we are greatly in your debt.
So, what will the visitor to Ireland expect to encounter these days?
I hope that they will experience those old values that I spoke of earlier - warmth, friendship and welcome. They will see beautiful unspoilt landscapes of amazing diversity for such a small island, from the haunting rugged harsh beauty of Donegal to the unique light and stone of Clare’s Burren, from the ancient mystery of the Giant’s Causeway to the inland lakelands and waterways which link North and South – the visitor can be in a different world morning and afternoon.
They will also find an Ireland increasingly at ease with itself culturally, self-confident and bursting with creativity. An Ireland that is enjoying unprecedented economic success and prosperity and where we are investing much of that new found wealth in improving and developing the facilities we have to offer. They will see a culture, alive and vibrant, a people full of enthusiasm and hope. They will encounter a country enjoying what we believe will be a lasting peace - an island beginning to feel the real benefits of the Good Friday
Agreement on Northern Ireland which was reached last year.
As I said earlier, it’s a particular pleasure to be present at an event jointly organised by Bord Fáilte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. The benefits and the logic of co-operation in tourism between the two parts of Ireland are particularly obvious, and have been recognised by Government, by the promotional agencies, and by the industry itself. The Destination Ireland brand has been developed in co-operation through the Overseas Tourism Marketing Initiative. And one of the new agreed North/South structures to be put in place as part of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement will be an overseas marketing company jointly owned by today’s two host agencies.
As a Belfast woman now living in Dublin with a family home in County Down and an even older family home, now a holiday cottage in Carrick-on-Shannon, I think I am particularly well-qualified to assure you about the beauty, diversity, fascination and welcome that awaits in Ireland – North and South. The splendour of the scenery, the warmth of the welcome, the rhythm of the music, the golf and the fishing, and the love of chat - even, very occasionally of course, the quality of the drizzle. We have one of the most sophisticated, enduring and effective sprinkler systems in the world. No two places are the same – each has its particularity, its uniqueness – but each complementing the other. Waterford has crystal; Lisburn has Irish linen. Newbridge has beautiful Irish cutlery. North and South we can make quite a table to sit around and to share.
The North offers the richness of the powerful and distinctive Protestant and Unionist strand of our island’s culture with its links to the American Scotch-Irish tradition. And as an Ulsterwoman and a President, I take pleasure in noting that there are many more US Presidents - including Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S.Grant, Woodrow Wilson and, very probably, Bill Clinton - who have family connections with the historic province of Ulster than with Leinster, Munster and Connacht put together.
The consolidation of lasting peace and stability on the basis of the Good Friday Agreement will bring particular benefits to Northern Ireland because, as a result of its recent history, tourism has contributed much less to the Northern than to the Southern economy. Though there is still a way to go, this is now beginning to change, and to change rapidly. And it is understood by the tourism professionals on both sides of the border that the development of the sector in the North will actually benefit the South as well, as the overall volume of visitors continues to increase. So this is conspicuously an area where good politics makes for good economics - and where through working together we can help ourselves while offering the rest of the world a unique and memorable experience.
This is a great time to visit Ireland, a time of change, of renewal, a time of exciting new developments. We in Ireland always love to receive visitors, and are now better prepared than ever to ensure that they have a pleasant and memorable stay with us. I know that through the sterling efforts of Bórd Fáilte and of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, and of course through the hard work of the travel and media business, we can look forward to seeing even more of you in Ireland in the years ahead.
- Mo bhuíochas libh arís. Guím rath Dé oraibh sna blianta atá le teacht.