The northern economy minister (for the time being), Conor Murphy, has warned that the introduction of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme for non-EU travellers to Northern Ireland from this month – and to non-Irish EU travellers from April – “will have a devastating impact on tourism in the north of Ireland”.
While the process to obtain an ETA seems straightforward and the cost of £10 per person appears not too onerous, it still is a deterrent for tourists to cross the border, one of many since the partition of Ireland in 1921.
Following partition, there was some co-operation between the two Irish jurisdictions on tourism and other matters, mainly amongst civil servants behind closed doors though.
Being on the same small island with the same climate and landscape made it difficult for the two Irish polities to diverge too much on what could be offered to tourists.
The Free State’s Irish Tourist Association (ITA) wrote in 1927: “We trust that those who visit the north will also visit the south; we trust too that those who visit the south will travel to the north… there is no boundary to beauty”.
Likewise, speaking in 1930, the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig said “Ulster was glad to pass on her tourists” to the Free State, and he was sure the Free State was equally glad to pass hers to the Six Counties.
However, the promotion of tourism by the ITA and by the Ulster Tourist Development Association (UTDA) in Northern Ireland had a strong political dimension, with both voluntary bodies reliant on government support, financially and legislatively.
While the ITA emphasised the idyllic, untarnished beauty of the Irish landscape, the UTDA sought to portray the north as modern and progressive.
The ITA invited travellers to “Ireland”, whereas the UTDA invited them to “Ulster”.
The misuse of the name Ulster did not just draw criticism from nationalists but from some unionists too, with Armar Lowry-Corry, the 5th Earl Belmore of Castle Coole in Fermanagh, saying it was “disgraceful” that the UTDA “have the impudence to call” Northern Ireland “Ulster”.
He also believed the UTDA should promote tourism to Donegal, “the chief centre for tourists”, even though the county was not in Northern Ireland.
According to JT Nugent, border-based authorities such as Newry Rural Council “threatened to withdraw their subscription until the UTDA lobbied for more approved routes into the Free State”.
The biggest obstacle to cross-border tourism came about after the Free State government introduced customs barriers in April 1923 which created a hard border in Ireland.
Overnight, the border landscape changed to one of customs and boundary posts, to approved and unapproved routes.
Afterwards, tourists travelling by train, bus or car were subjected to long delays, the filling of complicated forms and customs checks.
Initially, cars were unable to cross the border on Sundays or public holidays, until it was agreed to remove this impediment for tourists in fear of hampering the industry.
With many in Great Britain assuming they would have to undergo customs checks in visiting any part of Ireland, the UTDA and the northern government went to great lengths to highlight that Northern Ireland was part of the UK customs union and that “the trading relationships which exist between Great Britain and Ulster are exactly the same as those which exist between, say, Lancashire and Yorkshire”.
In a foreword for the 1939 UTDA ‘Ulster: For Your Holiday’ guide, James Craig reminded people from England, Scotland or Wales that “in coming amongst us you will not have left your home country” and will not have to worry “with anything in the shape of customs formalities, passports or motor regulations”.
Tourism was central to the meetings between Seán Lemass and Terence O’Neill, which commenced this month 60 years ago.
Areas of co-operation on tourism agreed to by both men included the removal of a requirement for a triptyque pass to enter either jurisdiction and consideration of permitting the free passage of hired cars through border checkpoints.
Lemass and O’Neill also agreed that the relevant ministers in both jurisdictions, Erskine Childers and Brian Faulkner, should hold joint talks in the near future.
While Childers sought co-operation between both Irish governments, as well as the British government, “especially in the lucrative American market”, he met with an “uncooperative attitude” from the northern government body, the Northern Ireland Tourism Board (NITB).
According to Michael Kennedy: “It would appear that everything the NITB did in relation to the Republic contained a political dimension and so co-operation over tourism promotion remained very unlikely.”
Despite the efforts for more cross-border tourism co-operation in the mid-1960s, the onset of the Troubles later in the decade spurned such hopes.
The Troubles severely impacted on the numbers of tourists travelling to the north, as well as to the south, with optimism only re-surfacing after the IRA ceasefire of August 1994, when once again efforts were made to increase north-south tourism co-operation.
Tourism brand Ireland allowed Irish tourism “to unify behind a single market initiative”.
While security checkpoints remained for much of the 1990s, customs barriers were removed with the onset of the EU Single Market in January 1993. It was considerably easier for tourists (and everyone else) to cross the border from thereon in.
Distrust remained, as Eric GE Zuelow has noted, with unionist proposals for joint tourism ventures with Scotland being seen by nationalists as attempts to strengthen the union, and nationalist efforts for increased cross-border co-operation being seen by unionists as a stepping stone to a united Ireland.
Highlighting its sensitivity as an issue, tourism was not included as one of the six cross-border bodies agreed to after the Good Friday Agreement.
Instead it was included as an area of co-operation, resulting in the formation of Tourism Ireland in December 2000, which, working in tandem with Bord Fáilte and Tourism NI, is responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas.
With most of the impediments of the past removed, cross-border co-operation and tourism to Northern Ireland has flourished, so much so that there are now “ambitious” plans to double the tourism industry in the north by 2035.
However, as the introduction of the UK government’s ETA scheme shows – another consequence of the disastrous decision of the UK to leave the EU – as long as a border exists on the island, regardless of how seamless it may appear, so too will barriers remain to true all-island tourism.