Tourist board’s ‘green image’ is a pile of rubbish
As much as these issues are important, our political masters appear to have totally forgotten the country's most obvious and visible waste management problem the litter-filled linear dumps that are omnipresent in the streets and roads of our towns, cities and countryside.
I live near Killaloe, probably the most tourist-orientated inland waterway town in Ireland. I work in Limerick, the commercial capital of the mid-West, and a tourist gateway to southwest Ireland. The roads into Killaloe resemble linear dumps. There is hardly a five-metre stretch of roadside green margin on the Limerick to Ballina/Killaloe road that is not covered with litter and discarded household rubbish.
There was a huge outcry in the late 1990s about the littered state of Ireland. Articles were written in the press, statements were made in the Dáil and every politician agreed that we had become a nation of uncaring litterbugs.
We are now nearing the mid-point of 2003 and despite all the fine words and promises, Ireland's towns, cities and roadways are still as littered as ever.
Limerick Corporation spends a small fortune every year on street cleaning, and still its streets, parks and the basement areas of main buildings are covered with every type of litter. It is the same story in Nenagh and Ennis.
And yet our tourist organisations, hotel operators and travel groups continue to place the blame on several years of slow growth in tourism on a reluctance on the part of overseas tourists to fly to Ireland.
Could it be that the message has gone out about Ireland, by word-of-mouth from tourists who have visited Ireland, negative press reviews in the international media, or through the internet, that Ireland is not only a high-priced tourist destination, but in terms of our attitude to the environment, a filthy one at that?
Bord Fáilte uses the island's "green image" to sell Ireland abroad. How long will it be before international tourists from Europe, Asia, Canada, the US and South America see through this lie?
Duncan Fielding,
Cappa,
Killaloe,
Co Clare.
