Why would anyone visit Ireland once, not to mind *twice*, given the following:

1. it’s one of the most expensive countries in Europe now, with bad value for money;
2. the culture, which was our greatest asset, has been killed stone dead in the last ten years;
3. the weather is crap – but we can’t do anything about that – when we still had a culture, tourists used to overlook the weather because of the “Irish Charm”;
4. the traffic and getting around is a nightmare, and so expensive.

The quality of life in Ireland has been destroyed. We are a nation of amazing marketing geniuses, but we can’t keep fooling the tourist – and we won’t. People used to come here for our easy going way, our fantastic way of looking at life and the “green legends”. Only the legends live now…

The Celtic Tiger was built on a fantastic ,but weak, foundation which was our corporate tax level mainly. If the rest of Europe applied the same taxes we would be back digging trenches with our fingers, sowing spuds to feed our families. The only other industry we had was tourism and we have killed that, because we all got carried away with an arrogant attitude because we made a few quid in a few years. We will not always be so clever.

The Chinese and the Eastern Europeans are gaining ground on us at serious speed. We are now a police state, an open prison. Our people are under so much pressure that we are now leading Europe and the Western World in a competition for who can work hardest and sleep the least. We don’t even have time to look after our own families, let alone look after tourists.

When you come to Ireland and visit our famous pubs, restaraunts and hotels, and you are met by somebody who is Eastern European, it´s not good enough. I have nothing whatsoever against Eastern European folk – to the contrary, I believe they are a huge asset to our society, but if I go to Poland (which I have many many times) I want to meet the *Polish*. Any Eastern European working in the frontline of the tourist industry should have perfect English, a very good understanding of Irish culture and history. It is not their fault that some of them in the frontline don’t have the above knowledge – it’s the people that employed them. I don’t care if the Eastern Europeans own the establishments, but I bet you if they did (and they will) they will be clever enough to have Irish working in the frontline.

The Irish are now working and living in the following way:

1. both partners in the family are working flat out;
2. their travel time to work is ridiculous;
3. between child minders and big mortgages, they only have time to sleep;
4. they are constantly under pressure because their one and only beautiful life is out of control trying to juggle so much;
5. the word balance has dissapeared out of peoples` lives as they drink at home like hermits, never mixing with others;
6. they are trying to keep up with a rat race that somebody else invented for them;
7. we have gone from one extreme to another in the blink of an eye in the past ten years, and we are going to pay for these mistakes in the future.

Who do we think we are? We have no natural resources worth talking about. We have a well educated young population, but China and the Eastern European countries are catching up so fast it would make you dizzy, and they are much more competitive. Believe me, I have travelled the World and we are so insignificant and will become more so unless we start to change fast. We need to look after tourists and get our culture back on track. We always got on well as Irish wherever we went, because of who we were, not who we are now. We have become so arrogant just because of a few good years with the Celtic Tiger. There is an expression that “a friend in need is a friend in deed” I think is the exact opposite, i.e. “it’s only when your friend doesn’t need you anymore that you really find out how much of a friend he/she is”. The Irish government and its people got a few quid and look what it did to them….

Our Taoisach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern has lead our country for ten years now. He got the real difficult problems sorted, fair play to him. He sorted out the economy and he made fantastic moves as a national and international diplomat, but why couldn´t he stop that Michael Martin and Michael McDowell destroying all of the good work? Those two a***h*les turned Ireland into an *open prison*, and ultimately Bertie is responsible for this. They have brought out legislation that is of no effect except to annoy people, for no good reason, and lost the run of themselves.

If I had the power tomorrow, these are the changes that I would make to put us in some way back on the right road:

1. I would stop the traffic cops wasting time with their silly speed checks and catching people breaking speed limits by 5kph or even 10. This is annoying people and wasting resources. All of the traffic cops should be in unmarked cars, vans and even trucks. They should have video equipment and be catching people driving dangerously. It is much safer to be doing 80 mph on a main road at 6 o´clock on a fine summer´s morning than it is to be trying to pass out at 60mph on a bad, wet, dark December evening at 6pm with the roads full of traffic. I see people driving dangerously nearly every day at home and I´m sure an unmarked van or truck would too. Of course, there has to be a speed limit – but common sense must prevail!
2. I would stop these stupid tribunals dead and stop wasting huge amounts of money. It would be better to find a way to stop corruption from happening again and get on with life. Of course, Bertie can´t do that because he is implicated in them. If the tribunals don´t find anything more or substantial on Bertie, this will be a desperate waste of time. Ok, so he got a dig out of whatever (maybe 80,ooo Euros – I don´t know the exact amount). This is wrong, but how wrong! Everybody has sins, and when someone is minister for finance and going through a divorce, that is serious pressure. He didn´t do this to have a mansion or a Rolls Royce. He wanted to take the pressure off in the easiest way possible and with the least amount of bother. I bet he is sorry now that he didn´t just organise a loan. If they find more it´s a different story, but I don´t think he is a greedy person who was trying to build up huge wealth for himself. Maybe I´m wrong, but I doubt it.
3. The price of drink in off licences should be the same as pubs. This would stop people drinking too much at home and they would go back to the pubs and socialise more, just like it used to be. It would also stop under age drinking, or at least slow it a lot.
4. Taxis taxis taxis! The way they brought in this deregulation was a disaster. Of course, we needed more taxis at certain peak times, but most of the time there were taxis hanging around anyway. They should have made part-time licences available only for the rush hours and let the full-time taxi drivers make a living. This was so badly tought out and so many taxi drivers were banking on selling their licences for their pension. Now in Cork we have gone from 200-300 taxis to 2,000. They are all sitting around and not making a living. I think there should be a standard taxi fare of 5 Euros from anywhere in the south side to the centre, or with in the south side and the same for the north side. I firmly believe the taxi drivers would make more money and traffic would benefit because people would use taxis much more, and would go out much more. The current prices on the meters would have to stand at peak traffic times because the taxis can´t get around fast enough to make money. Somebody should set up a base for all those independent taxi drivers and charge the above prices. For sure they would all make money! Some similar scheme should be introduced in all areas of Ireland. I can only comment on Cork, as every city and town is different in size etc.
5. The famous smoking ban!!! I wasn´t in Ireland when the ban came into force, but I was sure that it wouldn´t be enforced because I tought people would get up in arms and rebel. I was wrong! I am a smoker and I hate smokey bars. I only want to smoke my own cigarette. If there were proper ventilation and smoke extractors fitted there should have been no need to have a smoking banned, as smoke would rise to the extractors straight away. Of course, Uncle Michael Martin knows what´s best for everyone regarding health, even though he, in my opinion, looks twice his age from interfering in the way he thinks others should live. There is one for the ex-minister for health! Did he ever stop to think about the effect his smoking ban would have on society, with people not going out like they used to, sitting at home, lonely? Their only interaction was with people in their local for a few pints and he destroyed that, which I am sure has caused mental stress, loneliness and even suicides. Should Michael Martin be brought up for murder? Again, it was one extreme to another, by a very arrogant type of human being.
6. There should be a limit on the amount of money a couple or a single person can borrow, which should be a percentage of only one income over the past five years. Also, only 70% of the price of a house should be advanced by a financial institution. This would bring down the price of property and leave people with a reasonable disposable income – to have a *life*. In the event of any bank advancing more money to somebody, they should have no recourse in the courts to regain the difference. A Celtic Tiger based on screwing the people into borrowing more than they can afford, cracking up under pressure, being a contributary factor to suicides and marrige breakdowns and even family murders (in extreme cases) isn´t worth a shit. People working flat out with 30 year mortgages, some on interest only for a period and 100% financed. We don´t need that type of tiger. The tiger was fuelled by other factors as well, and they were positive, but this part was very negative.

When I bought Charlie´s Bar in Lanzarote, my main reason was to have a place for people to go and enjoy the craic and the music like it used to be back in Ireland. We have live music seven nights a week with two live bands and you can get a taxi home for 3 Euros. You can go out for a good steak, glass of wine and a coffee nearly anywhere for 15 Euros.

I keep going back to Ireland every few weeks because it´s where I have family and friends, but if I was not from Ireland, I couldn´t see any reason to go there at the moment. I hope all that will change sooner rather then later before there is too much damage done, or before the tourists cop on. This is constructive critisism of a country and a culture I used to love. It´s not Ireland bashing for the sake of it. Let´s make sure that what ever politicians we vote for put these simple but important things right again, and keep them right, which shouldn´t be difficult given the much more difficult bridges we have already crossed as a nation before.
Adios and Rock on Charlies.

Murphy