Botanist and environmentalist Dr David Bellamy has called on the Government to draw up a strategy to save Ireland's environment from damage caused by rapidly growing tourism.
Dr Bellamy was speaking before addressing a conference on tourism and the environment organised jointly by Bundoran UDC and Erne Enterprise in the Co Donegal town on Saturday.
He said the problem with tourism was that it generally involved people "who are already rich who can see another way of making money out of other people's resources. The resources of the countryside are the resources of the farmers. The farmers have kept the countryside."
He said he believed tourism, if planned and managed properly, could be a force for good in protecting the environment. Sustainable tourism benefiting local communities, rather than international operators, was the key. "It is tourism of the right size that gives local jobs and puts money into the local environment."
Ireland had "the great chance of creating the perfect sustainable tourism" as it still had "a wonderful diverse landscape".
"The problem is that there are an enormous number of greedy people outside Ireland who want to run tourism here: hotel chains, tour operators etc."
Dr Bellamy said that with the form of sustainable tourism he was speaking of practically every farm family could benefit by running B&Bs or other services. Tourist numbers could increase without harming the environment.
"I'm sure you could put 10 million tourists through Ireland every year and not notice they were here if you do it the right way." The tourism season could be spread over seven months, with "discerning tourists" arriving at different times.
Dr Bellamy said foreign holiday-makers came to Ireland to see "round and green hills, not blocks of Sitka Spruce and package holiday hotels". Ireland was still "not nearly as far down the road" as Britain and "could still save itself brilliantly".
He was concerned that the large-scale development of holiday homes and apartments in Irish seaside towns - many from a Government tax incentive scheme - would damage family-run guesthouses and B&Bs. The wet climate had saved Ireland from the kinds of developments seen in other coastal areas of Europe. "If this was a Mediterranean climate, what would this coast be like? It would have been totally screwed up."
Dr Bellamy said that since he first came to Ireland more than 30 years ago to conduct research for his doctorate, many wildfowl had disappeared as bogs were drained. "Thank God you haven't destroyed all the hedgerows but in between there is green concrete. I mean, the farmer uses soil as a sort of chemical growing ground, which is bad news for wildlife and bad news for the rivers."
He said large-scale planting of Sitka Spruce trees were destroying the natural hydrology system and that many ecologically-important areas, including parts of the Burren, were under threat from the use of fertilisers.
He believed the worst tourism development in Ireland was the visitors' centre in Dingle, Co Kerry. "It should never have been built. Thank God they didn't build the one on Mullaghmore. Why spoil the very thing that people come to see?"