Irish Tourism: 1880–1980 (review)

Reading through Irene Furlong's excellent study on the growth of the Irish tourist industry, one is struck by the number of obstacles that the industry had to address, some peculiar to the country itself. Being an island means that visitors have to undertake extra effort and expense just to get to Ireland. And when they arrive, they must deal with weather that is at best uncertain and at worst very wet. These problems have been mitigated by the fact that Great Britain has been for a long time Ireland's primary tourist market. The British themselves live on an island, and, until cheap air travel opened up Majorca after WorldWar II, sun-starved Britons could hardly complain about an the Irish climate not much worse than their own.

Other ongoing problems have been harder to address. During most of the century covered by Furlong, Ireland lacked both sufficient accommodations and the trained staff required to meet international tourist standards. When, in the 1940s, the Irish Tourist Board began registering and rating hotels, it apparently came as news to many hoteliers that guests might expect clean bed linen regardless of what day of the week they arrived. Also, given the shortcomings of Irish design for much of the twentieth century, the visual appeal of such basic things as posters and brochures—not to mention souvenirs—had to be addressed. In 1950, Thomas Bodkin, the former director of the National Gallery, found much of the government's promotional material "lamentably inartistic," a point reinforced by some of the book's many illustrations. Behind such issues, of course, lurked the larger and contentious question of what sort of image Ireland wished to market to the world: Paddy and his pig, turf and donkeys, saints and scholars?

The most difficult challenge facing champions of Irish tourism, entrepreneurs, and public servants alike, lay in convincing the Irish people and various governments that tourism could make a meaningful, even a great contribution to the nation's economy. Christopher S. (Todd) Andrews, a civil servant who joined the Irish Tourist Association in 1926, was convinced that tourism was a "shoddy business…more associated with national mendacity than legitimate industry." Some feared that tourism would turn the Irish people into a nation of servants, while others were concerned that an influx of foreigners would "denationalize" the Irish people, or at least, seriously impede the revival of the Gaelic language. Given this context, it is notable that among those who worked hardest to establish tourism in Ireland were former republicans who came to dominate the Irish Tourist Association and its successor, the Irish Tourist Board, founded in 1939. This was due in part to patronage by Seán Lemass, who, when he held the post of minister of industry and commerce in various Fianna Fáil governments, appointed a number of old comrades to the tourist bodies, some of which he set up and controlled.

Lemass is a key figure in Furlong's complex narrative. Initially skeptical about the potential for tourism from abroad, he told the Dáil in 1931 that "We have not in this country either the climate or the facilities, or the legislative intention of providing attractions for tourists that are provided in certain Continental countries." Lemass wanted the government to focus on promoting internal tourism and on attracting back the overseas Irish for occasional visits. Given the dismal international situation during the Depression and World War II, the prospect of providing opportunities for vacationing Irish people was about all that kept hopes for Irish tourism alive. After the war, however, Lemass's attitude toward tourism changed, and he actively supported efforts to create an Irish niche in the international tourist trade. Lemass received little encouragement from his chief, de Valéra, whose interests in tourism seemed to have been satisfied by the establishment of the transatlantic airport at Shannon in his home base in County Clare.

There were, of course, other shakers and movers in the...