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Time to flee Ireland of the Failte Towers
Pat Fitzpatrick lashes out the truth, come hell or high water
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By Pat Fitzpatrick
Sunday Aug 10 2008
Welcome to hell. Can you imagine what the returning holidaymakers must have thought when they hit the pandemonium at Cork Airport last Tuesday morning?
The Ireland they had left two weeks previously was a damp place headed for a short recession. Now they step off the plane into two feet of water to find that the country's third airport can't afford to pay its electricity bill.
Inside the terminal, as the shouts of "I was here first, ya langer" bounced off the unlit walls, thousands of people desperate to leave the country shuffled in the gloom from one baggage queue to another, wailing "Celtic Tiger me arse." The people back from Costa del Dry then paddled across to the taxi-rank, where their driver tried to strangle them when they casually said the obligatory, "I hear the weather wasn't that great when we were away."
Those who were lucky enough to live in the small pockets of Cork which remained above water after the weekend's flooding must have been delighted to get home after their airport hell. They probably put on the kettle and the TV, consoled with the notion that things could hardly get any worse.
Then they watched Failte Towers. It is clear that things have turned so bad in this country that z-list celebrities, failed Eurovision acts, reality-tv refugees and somebody called Patricia McKenna are forced to seek work in the catering trade.
Poor Evelyn Cusack seems to be thrown in there as a punishment for all the crap weather she has been correctly predicting. Is this the kind of country we want our children to grow up in?
Broken by Failte Towers, our returned holidaymakers pack up and head straight back to the airport. They arrive at the ticket desk, waving their Visa cards and shouting "They're minor celebrities -- get me out of here."
- Pat Fitzpatrick
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