Ireland of the Welcomes via the scenic route

IRELAND’S tourism chiefs are puzzled as to why more tourists from mainland Europe, North America and Asia don’t visit here. Perhaps they should ask how they are expected to get here?

It is amazing that there are still no direct flights between Ireland and Australia, Canada and South America, not to mention Africa. For potential tourists from these countries to visit Ireland, they must first fly to France, Denmark, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, and then fly on to Ireland.

This is ridiculous. To compound the problem, there are too few scheduled flights between Ireland and mainland Europe. Airports like Shannon and Cork are fine if one wants to fly only to the UK, but virtually useless if one wants to get to Spain, Portugal, eastern or central Europe. Is it little wonder that Ireland has become so overly dependent on tourism from America when we have failed to develop our tourism product on a global scale?