Queen’s visit is all about making money

IT would appear from the coverage of the impending visits of both the US president and the British queen that the opportunity to promote Ireland abroad is topping the list of why the visits are timely and important.

However, particularly in the case of the queen, if we are simply trying to use these “historic” visits to our own (financial) advantage, should we not simply say so?

Have we learned anything from our past, particularly the last five years? We should not use hundreds of years of history and years of diplomacy to try to get more tourists to help improve our economy.

The downfall of the Celtic Tiger was smoke and mirrors while we tried to make money.

Why are we continuing to use smoke and mirrors to finance our way back out of oblivion? The “maturity” in extending an invitation to the queen would seem to be a contradiction when all we want to do is make money and create jobs out of it.

Gavin Deady

Midleton

Co Cork