Dublin – A Plague On Your City Says Rural Ireland

Dublin! Dublin! Dublin! everything appears these days to be centred in and around Dublin. A plague on our Capital city say the dwellers from “Beyond the Pale.”

It now appears that this city formally known as “The Pale” is being promoted as a place for “Fun and Craic” in a new solo run using €1 million of  our Tourism campaign funding.

The word “pale ” (An Pháil) derives ultimately from the Latin word palus, meaning a stake, used to support a fence and from this came the figurative meaning of boundary and eventually the phrase “beyond the pale” as something outside the boundary of an area from Dundalk to Carrickmines Castle, Dublin known today as gullible “Rural Ireland.”

Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin TD said that this new radio and online campaign by Tourism Ireland would be seen by an audience of over 12 million, British tourists. She correctly states that Britain is the largest single source market for visitors to the island of Ireland and provides more than half of all visitors to the island. This campaign will  involve direct marketing and social media initiatives, as well as promotions with tour operators and air and sea carriers. It will capitalises on the British market and intensively promote Dublin to the British holidaymaker.

Frank Magee of Dublin Tourism states: “The capital city attracted 1.5 million visitors from Britain last year, which resulted in five million bed nights, but losing its market share in Britain. Dublin has been the driver in Irish tourism, bolstering the Irish figures in recent years and there’s a realisation that if Dublin doesn’t do well, Ireland doesn’t do well.”

What a load of verbal diarrhea Mr Magee. Ireland’s false reputation of being an expensive  holiday destination is spread by Tourists who spend too much time in Dublin drinking €3.50 cups of coffee served by staff who do not speak English .

Come on down to Tipperary folks if you want a holiday offering value for your money. Thurles is the ancestral home of your head of state, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,  and it is here you can experience  friendly relaxation, carefree fun and craic,  your children can run wild and run free, the air is clean and you can find your car still parked where you left it the night before.

It would appear rural Irish taxpayers, for far to long, have been the silent and subservient suppliers of ‘money on demand’ to support  Dublin tourism, so let us keep things in perspective remembering that in 2009 the Irish Hotels Federation represented almost 1,000 hotels and guesthouses throughout the whole country, which in turn employ over 59,000 people. It seems only proper that those beyond the Pale should  like their fair slice of the tourism promotion cake.

How Much Money Was Spent Promoting Our Capital City Dublin In The Past Ten Or So Years?

€5m for “The Monument of Light” or “Spire Of Light” erected in O’Connell Street, better known by the names: ‘The Spike’, ‘The Stiletto in the Ghetto’, ‘The Erection at the Intersection’, ‘The Poker next to Croker’ and ‘The Stiffy in the Liffey’. At the time of its erection on O’Connell Street in 2003, the Spire Of Light was described as “self-cleaning”, but Dublin’s city council now concede that its maintenance cost €205,000 last year and will increase to at least €218,000 this year, and thats before they pick up a discarded chip bag.

£300,000 to the Municipal Gallery in Dublin towards its plan to bring the Francis Bacon Studio back to Dublin.

£43,000 to The Island Journey Millennium Concerts,  held in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

£700,000 to The Messiah XXI, a modern rearrangement of Handel’s masterpiece, in the RDS, Dublin. I thought the old arrangement was fine.

£100,000; the Millennium Gold Encounter, a gathering of youth leaders from all over the world in Dublin.

£1.5 million for the Millennium Bridge, over the River Liffey in Dublin.

£1.5 million for The River Liffey Boardwalk  running 200 yards from O’Connell Bridge to the Capel Street Bridge. A horribly artificial and in no way romantic, peaceful or  serene, set of plastic wood coloured boards, that run alongside the river for about 200 yards, where the pavement is dangerously narrow and again built at this obscene cost.

£80,000 for the Tallaght Millennium Plaza in Tallaght town centre, Dublin.

£500,000 for the refurbishment of the front-of -house area of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

€167,000 or €550 weekly, for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s make-up for TV appearances in Dail Eareann, Dublin.

€80,000 for Ivor Callely’s imaginary moter fuel and other expenses while living in Dublin.

£250,000 to redevelop arts and theatre facilities in the LarCon Centre, Liberty Hall, Dublin.

£15,000 for the “Dublin 2000-A Celebration”, a 90 minute musical composition in Dublin

£10,000 for the Dublin International Piano Competition; RIAM Concert Series, Dublin.

£35,000 for the Ecumenical celebration for the new Millennium in National Concert Hall, Dublin.

£500,000 for the millennium clock christened “The Time in the Slime” which was  mechanically linked to a postcard printing machine on O’Connell Bridge that was supposed to print out the exact time for bystanders, but which only worked briefly before breaking down completely. The short lived Millennium clock was removed from the river, as the slimy water flow problems persisted and maintenance costs threatened to rocket. Ultimately, the clock was broken up, and its glass and metal parts recycled.

€775 million to build the red and green Luas lines in Dublin – while we here in Thurles cannot get a simple ring road to allow daily shoppers into the town.

€300 million to remove 10,300 public servants out of Dublin, which failed miserably. Is’nt it just as well they stayed, otherwise Dublin would be a giant ghost estate.

Then there were the statues : “Anna Livia” in Dublin’s O’Connell Street commonly known as the ‘Floozie in the Jacuzzi’ or ‘The Hoor in the Sewer’.  “Molly Malone” at the bottom of Grafton Street best known as the ‘Tart with the Cart’. The statue of women at the Ha’Penny Bridge known as the ‘Hags with the Bags’ and let us not forget the chimney stack with the new glass lift in Smithfield Village, now better known as the ‘Flue with the View’.

Inestimable funding to tackle the spate of gun murders which, this year, have claimed 17 lives in this ‘Friendliest City in Europe’, and the accompanying Emergency Response Unit covert patrols increased in Finglas and the north inner city to watch drug dealers at work.  Question: What do you call a North Inner City Dublin Man? – Answer: The Defendant.

And what about the robberies? Dublin has stolen from rural Ireland over the years to promote their city, the “Derry na Flan Chalice”, the eighth century religious manuscript known as the “Faddan More Psalter”, the “Book of Kells”, the “Ardagh Chalice” and the “Tara Brooch”, and there has not been one police investigation or conviction with regard to any one these robberies.

Listen I could be listing Dublin’s financial handouts at the expense of rural Ireland for the night!

Shannon Region Tourism only spent €108.00 in Tipperary for all of last year and that was for 200 postage stamps @ .54 cents each asking us to part with €1,500 for an small advert in their glossy Tourist Brochure which supports west of the Shannon. Some of us paid and the others just could not afford it and the latter now have become statistics filed in a drawer labeled ” Refuses To Pay Protection Money.”

Now, having stolen everything of value from rural Ireland and spent €1 million this year promoting just Dublin, our National Government based also in Dublin are looking at plans to introduce absurd tolls on National Roads. This, I suspect, is designed to keep unsuspecting and curious tourists back within the precincts of Dublin and away from rural Ireland, while expecting country mugs to fork out hundreds of euro a year per car, just to pop down to our local shop for a loaf of bread and a slice of cooked ham. People who live in rural areas served by national primary routes already pay heavy road tax, fuel tax, income tax, VAT and a myriad of other ridiculous charges all designed to keep Dublin’s Luas running.

Dublin, please note, we, the rural servile yokels can now read and write thanks to the Religious Orders. We realise we can no longer afford to continue to financially support you, and I think it’s time to fence you in again.

Mary Hanifin, as current Irish politicians go, you are the very best, but the next time I see you home in your native Thurles, Co Tipperary, you and I will have to sit and chat about tourism in these forgotten midlands.