New post-Brexit restrictions on tourism threaten to put one of the ‘bread-and-butter success stories of the Good Friday Agreement’ at risk, it has been claimed.
From January, US visitors to Ireland will be required to pay and register for the UK-wide Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme, even for a short journey to the north by car or coach.
Continental European tourists will face the same requirements from April.
It means that foreign tourists thinking of a day trip to Titanic by hopping on the new hourly service from Connolly Station to Great Victoria Street will now need to give considerable thought to an otherwise easy excursion.
Other hidden complications, including potentially invalid car and health insurance, could also cause substantial headaches.
Speaking to Irish News, senior economist Jim Power says the ETA scheme “is the tail end of Brexit” that could damage tourism across the whole island.
For foreign visitors, “anything that complicates is bad news”, Power says.
Promoting the whole island as a single tourism destination was a bread-and-butter success story of the Good Friday Agreement, the Irish publication notes, adding that criss-crossing the land opened up a range of possibilities for travellers.
A US tourist landing off one of the large number of direct transatlantic flights in Dublin could envisage taking in the Cliffs of Moher, some of the Wild Atlantic Way, the Guinness Storehouse and EPIC in Dublin, Titanic Belfast, the Causeway Coast, Derry, and on into Donegal.
Now, that looks set to get more complicated.
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