Killarney was, as usual, thronged with tourists over the bank holiday weekend. The town has of course attracted visitors since the 19th century who come in the main to experience its outstanding natural beauty and hospitality.

Apparently though, you can have too much of a good thing. Killarney supplements its natural attractions with a host of other activities as well as an array of festivals and concerts throughout the year.

The big event during the May Bank Holiday is the Rally of the Lakes.

The rally has been running for 29 years now and attracts petrol heads from all over the island. Locals in Killarney though are starting to wonder if it's worth all the hassle.

The problem is that Killarney is suffering from a continually worsening problem with traffic congestion and the rally, as you would expect attracts thousands of visitors driving cars. Just this week the local town council were complaining that funds allocated for upgrading the N22 road and providing a proper bypass of the town have been diverted into funding projects on the main routes to Dublin making the completion of the road, which was originally planned for 2009 likely to be some years away yet.

It seems they are also getting a bit picky in the Kingdom as to what kind of visitor they actually want to attract. The rally-goers are predominantly boy and girl racers it would seem, less inclined to frequent posh (and expensive) restaurants and hotels and more interested in chip vans, camp sites and B&Bs.

These visitors also make the whole area less appealing for the typically more sedate visitors that Killarney is after. The souped-up Hondas and Toyotas create an unseemly racket and take over the town you see.

In fairness, the locals may have a point.

The gardaí were out in force over the weekend and they seized more than 70 cars for a variety of reasons. The offending vehicles were seized for a variety of reasons including no NCT certs and not display tax discs. On top if that there were 12 drink driving arrests, 13 arrests following drug searches and 36 arrests for public order offences.

This is hardly the type of image Killarney wants to project to the wider public, particularly as the shrinking economy is likely to make competition far more fierce for the domestic tourism euro. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the rally though is the havoc it wreaked on the natural environment of the Ring of Kerry and Beara Peninsula.

The aftermath of the rally saw mounds of glass bottles cans and rubbish strew across some of the country's most scenic beauty spots. In an effort to appeal to the rally-goers better nature signs were erected along the route asking them to respect local residents rights, a clear indication that residents feared the worst.

There's no doubt that the event generates significant revenue for the local economy but it's clear that if it continues in the current manner it could be doing more long-term damage than good. A total of 61 arrests is considerable and disproportionately high for an event of this size.

If the rally-goers don't clean up their act there's a real chance that the Rally of the Lakes' days maybe numbered.

Comments (0) »

You must be logged in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.