Sir, – Regarding Genevieve Carberry’s thought-providing article (News Agenda, December 29th) and subsequent letters (January 3rd), English people simply don’t want to visit Ireland in the same numbers as yesteryear.
On New Year’s Eve, I passed Kilmainham Gaol and was struck by the lack of English being spoken in the queues outside. Of approximately 60 people, more than 85 per cent were non-English speaking. Would a business continue to plough capital into a market that was showing significant year-on-year reduction in spending, or would management look to spread its wings and find growth elsewhere? Our tourism sector would do well to accept that marketing budgets must be redirected away from “traditional” markets that, until recently, accounted for the majority of visitors. Perhaps our tourism chiefs should concentrate on the larger, EU-wide population of 503 million as opposed to the 62 million living in Britain? – Yours, etc,