As the country slowly moves out of level 5 restrictions, the tourism industry is gearing up for the summer, one that it hopes will be fuelled by people s pent-up, lockdown-fed desire to go anywhere at all, as long as it’s more than 5km from their house.
On Today with Claire Byrne, reporter Brian O’Connell bravely ventured to the sunny Aran Islands to gauge their readiness to receive visitors when accommodation services are scheduled to reopen in early June.
Brian was on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, population 800-900, where they’re expecting multiples of that number to land on their shore every day over the summer. But while business owners are hugely enthusiastic about large numbers of tourists coming to Inis Mór over the summer, not everyone is convinced it’s a great idea: