IRELAND:FÁILTE IRELAND is planning a homecoming festival for Irish people and those of Irish ancestry for 2012.
“The Gathering” has the potential to be “Ireland’s biggest tourism programme ever”, Fáilte Ireland chairman Redmond O’Donoghue revealed this week.
Details of the festival will be announced next year, but it is likely to be similar to the “Homecoming Scotland” festival held in 2009 which attracted an extra 100,000 visitors to that country.
The Irish version is likely to capitalise on the interest in ancestral tourism brought about by the publication online of the 1901 and 1911 censuses.
Mr McDonagh said “The Gathering” will be one of several major tourism events over the next two years.
The others will includes the tall ships visit to Waterford; the Solheim Cup, the women’s equivalent of the Ryder Cup; and the return of the Volvo Ocean Race to Galway in 2012.
He also revealed that the Convention Centre Dublin will host a major IT conference next year which will have 4,000 delegates and will generate 20,000 bed nights in Dublin.
