Minister hits back at Lonely Planet description of his home town

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern last night defended his home town after Dundalk was branded “tough, dour and charmless” in the new Irish edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook.

Mr Ahern dismissed the criticism of his Co Louth base and insisted it had come a long way since its El Paso border town image of the 1980s.

The guidebook’s seventh edition, written by Dubliner Fionn Davenport said: “Tough, uncompromising Dundalk is a reminder of a bygone age, when Irish towns couldn’t care less about looking pretty for the nice tourists and just went about the hard business of eking out a living. Louth’s dour county town is a charmless place, with few historic sites and not much else to see or do.”