The foot-and-mouth crisis has been a real shock for the tourist industry in the southwest. It was to have been the best of seasons in the southwest. It may now be the worst.
Inquiries to Killarney Tourist Office were significantly up in the first two months of this year. Indications from trade fairs on the Continent, and from Germany in particular, were "never better". Over the last two weeks, though, that interest has been replaced by nervousness, with some people wondering how long they can wait before cancelling.
Dozens of large conferences have been lost in Tralee and Killarney.
Those tourists that have arrived are flooding into the tourist office asking just what there is left for them to do, with the national park, Muckross House, and most visitor attractions off limits.
Tourism is the biggest industry in Co Kerry. It employs more than 10,000 people - and is conservatively worth £220 million. Agriculture, forestry and fishing, by contrast, employ 8,000, a number that is falling.
But two weeks ago when a bullock reared 15 miles from Killarney coughed and ran a high temperature in an abattoir in Tipperary, the tourist industry was threatened and it has been reeling ever since. Minimum losses of £5 million so far have been talked about. Jobs have already been lost.
By noon on the morning of the Castleisland scare, the 300delegate SIPTU women's forum at the Great Southern Hotel had been cancelled.
Several other big conferences were called off in both Tralee and Killarney.
Tourism people point out they were more than willing to play a part in staving off the foot-and-mouth threat. Red tape was placed over the national parks, Torc and Mangerton mountains were sealed off to save the red deer.
What really caused concern was the cancellation of the hugely important St Patrick's Festival - a decision that has drawn scathing criticism from tourism spokespersons.
It was, they said, like cancelling the tourist season and was done peremptorily and with little thought for them.
With everything closed and cancelled, tourists were being told, "Go home, we don't want you," Killarney of the Welcomes wrote to the Taoiseach.
They asked Mr Ahern to "blare out a clear message" and "accentuate the positive". Ms Maria Moynihan, a Kerrywoman who was the CEO of Macra before taking over the festival last August, has not heard much of the criticism. Everyone has been supportive, she said.
She recommended the postponement to the 13-member board and has no regrets for doing so. It was a tough decision taken by the board as a whole and it was necessary, she maintained.
There is a growing conviction, however, that nobody is listening to tourism. Ms Breeda Moynihan-Cronin, a South Kerry Labour TD and chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Tourism, complained that the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Dr McDaid, had no action plan or strategy for tourism. "Taking the lead from agriculture," to quote a spokesperson from the tourist industry, is just not acceptable.
Last year there had been a taste of things to come. The train strike brought losses of around 70,000 visitors to Kerry alone. "A special marketing fund of say £200,000 - a small amount in the context of what was lost - might have helped. It would have shown there was concern," said Mr Declan Murphy, the South Kerry tourism officer. Tourism in south Kerry has its detractors. But it is an incredibly gutsy industry. It has been built with little State or EU support, and there is not much of a safety net when things go wrong. It is a point not lost on those taking the risks.
Tourism has developed hugely in the last 10 years. It is a sophisticated product in Kerry. Yet as Mr Peter McDermott, the manager of the Brandon Hotel in Tralee, said, tourism is still a Cinderella industry. The loss of conference business is huge and will set off as big a crisis as in the mid-1980s, he predicts.
Tourism is paying for foot-and-mouth in cancellations and loss of image. Compensation has been ruled out. It is a bitter pill for the industry to swallow.