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Failte Ireland lies to International Media!?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Failte Ireland lies to International Media!?

I love Dublin! I am living here for ages and for more than 11 years I wrote a online publication about cultural events in Dublin, but during that time I also have seen how the official groups responsible for tourism (especially in Dublin!) do less and less and expect more and more money to be dropped by tourists.

New Year’s Eve is not the most exciting day of the year in Dublin and if anyone asked me, I would strongly recommend that potential visitors stay far away between 24 December and 02/03 January. It is just sooo disappointing if you go to a city for these celebrated days and there is NOTHING happening.

In previous years some attempts were made to make Dublin a little more interesting at least over New Year with the New Year’s Festival Dublin. It consisted of some events on New Year’s eve (many years ago we even had fireworks!) and then more events and activities on New Year’s Day. But in 2018 all this changed again and it is the poorest and most disappointing events programme for the New Year’s Festival in at least 5, maybe 10 years!

There are just two light shows at Customs House. They are free, but needed tickets (which are all gone) and then there is a gig (not free!!) in the 3Arena. Apart from that there is not a single official event and NO events on New Year’s Day. Private Fireworks are forbidden in Ireland, nobody pays fro public Fireworks, so New Year’s Eve is a Non-Event!

That’s the facts!! But Failte Ireland is of the opinion that the facts shouldn’t get in the way of their “Fake news” marketing!

900 media representatives from 20 countries were invited to come to Ireland just before New Year’s and Failte Ireland is trying to convince them of something that is clearly untrue.

A RTE News article here says:

“The New Year’s Festival in Dublin is set to showcase tourism in the capital, and encourage more people to visit the capital and Ireland in 2019, according to tourism groups.”

“Liam Campbell from Fáilte Ireland’s International Publicity team said this year’s New Year’s Festival promises to be the most impressive end of year celebration Dublin has ever seen.”

What an amount of codswallop!

Do I think people should come to Dublin? Absolutely YES! It is a great place with lots of free and non free events during the year. This is mostly not thanks to Failte Ireland or Dublin City, but luckily we have lots of great people and businesses in Ireland that do a great job. But PLEASE tell people that they should avoid the Christmas and New Year’s period if they don’t want to be disappointed.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Events, Media, Odd, Overexaggerations, Tourism, , , ,

Bad News for the College Green Plaza

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Bad News for the College Green Plaza

Dublin City had planned to pedestrianise the College Green area from the TCD front to approx. where H&M and Starbucks are and turn this new City Centre Plaza into a public amenity. (An article is here.) It would have been the first and only City Centre event space and in my opinion it is the perfect location for a PROPER Christmas Market in Dublin.

But the planning authority, An Bord Pleanala, was not in favour of it because it would have a negative effect on traffic and would cause unacceptable conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians.

At the moment College Green can only be used by buses and taxis and getting taxis out of this area would – in my opinion – be a good thing.

By the way: The only chance a Christmas Market has in Dublin if it a) is in a central location and b) is organised and run by Dublin City, NOT an event management company and definitely not by DublinTown.

The next steps that Dublin City will take regarding this, have not been revealed yet.

Dublin City Council, Tourism, Traffic, , ,

Ryanair does hate you!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Ryanair does hate you!

It must be hate for its customers, there is no other way I could explain the constant messing around with the rules for baggage. I can’t even keep up with it anymore and to keep it that way, I have to admit that I am going out of my way to avoid flying with Ryanair. Oddly, I like Ryanair – or at least what it had wanted to and did achieve. Without Ryanair we would still pay super high ticket prices for highly inefficient airlines. Ryanair got others to tighten their ship (or plane) to get more efficient and to reduce the profit margins. Thank you, Ryanair!

But now they are changing the baggage rules again and it is ALWAYS getting worse for their customers. We never wanted to bring a huge suitcase on board, we would all prefer to check in our luggage, but Ryanair forced us to re-think. They thought that it would reduce cost for them because baggage handling at the airport is expensive. But people continually increased their bags (despite the bag size checker at the gate) to bring on board and that delayed planes.

Then the told us that Priority customers can still bring their 10kg bag on board, but the rest had to hand it over at the boarding gate (initially they wanted you to check it hand luggage at check in – the contradiction! – , but that was changed) and only a Laptop-sized bag was allowed on board. But the handed over hand-luggage that was to be carried in the hold of the plane was not charged extra.

Now the new change is that UNLESS you pay for priority boarding you will now have to pay for your hand luggage as well. Ryanair claims that they are making this change because planes are getting delayed because people bring too much hand luggage. This is TOTAL nonsense. Since there was a definite 10kg limit for ONE bag only, they can’t bring more than 10kg in one bag. So NO the planes are not delayed because of too much hand luggage. And the ONLY reason why we bring lots of hand luggage anyway is because Ryanair pushed us in the direction of the check-in-luggage-free flight.

You really could get the impression that Ryanair hates their employees (especially pilots and flight attendants) and even more so, they seem to hate us so much that they even lie to us. :-O

www.rte.ie/news/2018/0823/987129-ryanair-hand-luggage/

Irish, Tourism, , ,

National Museum at Collins Barracks hikes up Parking Fees

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
National Museum at Collins Barracks hikes up Parking Fees

We have something great in Ireland! All our four National Museums do not charge any admission charge. That’s the National Museum at Collins Barracks, in Kildare Street, in Merrion Street and in Turlough, Co. Mayo. This is a bit of a luxury that not many countries have. Sure, it is not really free because in the end we all pay for it through our taxes, but at least you can go there without paying as often as you want.

Collins Barracks is a huge site with only half of it open as a museum and the other half is storage for a huge amount of additional exhibits. Collins Barracks also has is – as a former barracks – on a huge site that has its own car park.

Until 2013 parking was free there, but due to budget cuts in 2013 it was announced that they would have to charge for parking and the fees were a very moderate
+ EUR 2 for 0-3 hours
+ EUR 4 for all day parking.
That was still a good price and you could go to the museum for up to three hours for a low cost.

But last week on 19 May this substantially changed. The new charges are now
+ EUR 2 for just 1 hour
+ EUR 5 for up to 4 hours
+ EUR 12 for all day

That is a HUGE increase! If you assume maybe 2.5 hours for an extensive visit it will cost you EUR 5 instead of EUR 2 before. That’s 150% of an increase!! :-O

And no! Your taxes didn’t go down!

Dublin, Events, Tourism,

Bad news for us – TD Kevin Moran will remain in his job

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Bad news for us – TD Kevin Moran will remain in his job

Kevin Moran is an Irish politician and TD from Longford-Westmeath. He usually and oddly is referred to as “Kevin “Boxer” Moran” and it seems that the “Boxer” nickname – which he personally seems to love – is based on a story from when he was 8 years of age and punched another child on the football field. twitter.com/SineadHus/status/703728764564467712 It is quite odd that a grown up would use a nickname he got as a child (even worse that it is about punching another child) and with his website constantly referring to him as “Boxer”, you definitely get the impression that this guy is – let’s say “different”! From his website: “Boxer lives in Cornamagh, Athlone, is married to…… Boxer has been a keen angler all his life…” Boxer this and Boxer that! kevinboxermoran.com/about-kevin/

But back to his role in society! He is a politician and once was a Fianna Fail member until 2011, when he left the party NOT in a disagreement over some relevant party principle, but because he was unhappy that his party didn’t want to chose him as a candidate. IN 2016 he got elected to the Dail as an independent candidate and when Fine Gael needed to strike a deal with the Independent Alliance to get into government, Sean Canney and Kevin Moran were offered a shared role as the junior minister for the Office of Public Works (OPW).

As you would expect it from responsible politicians working in the interest of the Irish public, the two decided to toss a coin to decide who will take on the role first. :-O

Sean Canney won and took over the first term (he really lost, as you will see in the next sentence). One year later, in May 2017 then Kevin Moran took over the role and this week it has been confirmed that unfortunately he will remain as junior minister for the OPW as long as the Fine Gael government is in place and will not swap the role again with Sean Canney.

You might wonder why that affects us. So let me tell you what the OPW does. The Office of Public Works is responsible for all properties in state ownership. This includes all buildings that are owned or rented by the state, for example for offices for departments or semi-state agencies and it also includes historical and cultural sites like Newgrange, Dublin Castle, Kilmainham Gaol, Phoenix Park, all National Museums, Farmleigh House etc

We have a great situation in Ireland with free admission to the National Museums and the National Gallery, but other historic buildings usually charge admission charges. There is nothing wrong with that, after all the maintenance of these buildings and staff costs etc are very expensive and money either needs to come from the visitors OR from tax payers.

But in 2011 a great idea was implemented that brought the historic sites so much closer to the population in Ireland and not just visitors: While Brian Hayes was Junior Minister for the OPW and Clare McGrath was Chairman of the OPW the “First Free Wednesday” scheme was introduced. www.rte.ie/news/2011/0706/303306-heritage/ Every first Wednesday of the month all OPW properties were free to visit for everyone and it was a HUGE success. People in Dublin visited Kilmainham Gaol or Dublin Castle or the Casino in Marino often for the first time and there was a great buzz every first Wednesday.

But as soon as Sean Canney became Junior Minister and Maurice Buckley became OPW chairman in 2016 things changed. First Kilmainham Gaol was removed from the First Wednesday scheme, then Dublin Castle and recently Newgrange also is not free anymore on that one day every month.

But this April things even went one step further. For as long as I can remember, the guided tours in Farmleigh House were free, but in April when Farmleigh House re-opened after a long winter closure suddenly and completely quietly an admission charge was introduced for the guided tours there. The tour is just about 45 minutes long but the charge is bigger than you might expect: EUR 8 is the price of this tour that last year was completely free.

There is no doubt that “free programmes” cost money and in the end we all pay for it, but the justification for offering it for free (at least one day per month) is to bring the local touristic sites attractive and appealing to non-tourists in Dublin. We travel around the world and wherever we go we go to museums and visit monuments, but back on our home patch we seem to think that museums and historic buildings are only for visitors. The free programmes can – as we have seen from 2011 until 2015 – change that around and it is a big mistake to cancel this programme.

I can’t say for certain if the Junior Minister is the person responsible for cancelling the free programmes or if it is the OPW Chairman, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the Junior Minister and Kevin Moran (or Sean Canney) certainly hasn’t impressed with ANY great initiatives. So it is bad news that he will stay in the job for another while!

 

Dublin, Politics, Tourism, , , , , ,
 
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