So, it was almost poetic when the Emirates first direct flight from Dubai to Ireland,landed at the Dublin Airport and Irish tourism and transport minister,Leo Varadkar promptly noted ; “It is a good news story when it is hard to get good news in Ireland.”
For a country in recession, good news and bad seems twinned like the weather -- sunshine with intermittent rains.
“It was the banks. I used to get calls at midnight for zero interest loans. If not for Guinness (the iconic Irish beer), I too would have given in,” reminisces Tom about how it all began.
Tom, organises tours for the famous St. Michan’s Church in Dublin and has seen a drop in the number of visitors in the last two years.
He recalls, how some of his close friends bought a villa somewhere in Poland just over drinks for it looked that the banks with their schemes do not want their money back, ever.
“A year later my friends had to sell their property near Wicklow (a county near Dublin) to meet ends. The Polish dream is long gone,” he says ruefully.
The property price in Ireland has fell down by almost 45% since the peak of 2007 and the signs of revival are yet to reveal.
“But you should rub his ring finger,” he says pointing to a mummy at the Church. “He may bring you luck, he was a knight. God knows we need people from India to visit,” he says.
If Tom is selling both history and luck, the Irish government is hopeful of attracting both visitors and investors.
Next day it was cloudy and good news in Ireland is also short lived. All Irish papers had reported that the number of overseas trips to Ireland fell by 4.1% between September and November 2011.
In the middle of the town, in front of the Central Bank of Ireland, there is a group of protesters demanding that everyone including the European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) should stay out of Irish affairs.
Ireland was one of the first to respond to the Lehman Brothers col-lapse, guaranteeing Euro 440 bn of liabilities at six Irish-owned insti-tutions and a foreign-owned bank.
Known as the “Occupy Dame Street” movement, these protesters hold German Banks responsible for the Irish financial crisis. “Our Celtic Ti-ger was poached by the Germans,” says Wesley Arder, one of the protesters and B-school student.
“Now we are paying them because they have successfully poached us,” he adds. A theory which has found many a believers in almost all pubs of Dublin.
“It is true,” says Tony, who works for one of the leading Irish Banks. “There was way too much cheap capital flowing from Germany, which created a real estate bubble in the Irish economy,” he says. But Tony is unsure if there is any other way out. “The economy is stabilising. Even Twitter (micro blogging website) will set up its office here,” said Vincent who works at airport. DAA is hopeful that they will see more traffic as a lot of tourists will spill over from the London Olym-pics this year.
But some Irishmen opine that counting on the Olympics may not be the idea of the moment, as there is general agreement among Dubliners that the present day economic ruins of the Greek economy lie in more than a dozen and now vacant Olympic venues built for the 2004 Olympics.
“I am scared for Londoners. I hope the UK does not nosedive,” says a sarcastic Kevin, who works at a bar in the famous Temple Bar Street, but his colleague, Patricia Murray is more hopeful, “I am counting on the Chinese and Yankees. Chinese specially because they are going to be number one this time in the medal tally. They should come here,” she says.
Patricia is not way off the mark, the Chinese Olympic team topped the gold medal tally in Beijing and reports in the British media indi-cate the UK is also counting on hordes of Chinese to arrive.
Ireland, a country which had celebrated authors such as James Joyce, is also hopeful to sell itself to brand itself as the new education hub. Attracting Indian students is high on every country’s agenda. And the Irish too are in the fray. "We may be a country in recession but there are jobs for skilled workers. Students studying here stand a good chance," said Lucey, an international education manger.
The next day, Irish papers were full of reports about 1,000 jobs lost in a day. The Irish are definitely trying hard to sell, the problem is that the slowdown is a global phenomena.
