Vol. 97 No. 16
I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £12,000 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1946, for a Grant-in-Aid of the Irish Tourist Board (No. 24 of 1939).
I want to make a short statement on this Vote. It will be remembered that when the Minister was introducing the Vote for his own Office, I asked that I should be allowed to make a short statement on this Estimate when it came along. I heard what the Minister had to say to-day about the limitation the Tourist Board put upon itself in its function to improve the standards of hotels in this country because it realises that the materials for the kind of requirements for which it may stipulate in normal times are not at present available. I suggest to the Minister that he ought to lose no time in securing that the Tourist Board will exact from hotels at least common comfort and cleanliness. Let me recite a story. Occasionally, when a matter of this kind comes up, I make an excursion to find out for myself what is doing, and last Sunday I sallied out to a hotel which I knew 12 years ago. It never put up to be a luxury hotel, but it was then a good plain hotel. I entered the hotel and found a factotum in the hall that I could not remember seeing there before, a gentleman dressed in a white coat, and he whipped the hat off me before I knew where I was. I thought this hotel is coming up in the world if you are not allowed to carry your hat, so I drew myself up as best I could and asked him if we might have afternoon tea. He matched my best accent and said: "Certainly".
That was an achievement.
My hopes were rising. He ushered us into the diningroom and we sat down at a table manifestly laid for luncheon. From that out I began to feel the staff was getting a bit out of its depth. A waiter came and I said I would like to have afternoon tea. That seemed to create confusion. He withdrew. He came back and asked me if I wanted meat with my tea. I said: "No, I do not want meat with my tea. I should like afternoon tea." He asked me to withdraw to the garden. That I thought reasonable enough. There was a number of people there who wanted a more substantial meal and I withdrew to the garden. I am afraid I will have to shock some of the company before I finish, but there is no other way of getting things done in this country. I withdrew to the garden with my company and shortly a very genial waiter arrived and provided tea. The milk was thick so we poured four cups of it over the marigolds and I went in with the milk jug and asked him to milk another cow, whereupon the waiter drank some milk out of the jug, smacked his lips, and said it was very sour and that he would certainly replace it. He was a very genial, pleasant man and he replaced the milk. I returned to the tea table and then we found there was no tea in the pot, so I went in with the teapot and a very genial, agreeable man said: "Right enough, not a drop, sir. We will make you a nice fresh pot", and, right enough, shortly, out he came with the fresh tea. We must all remember, the weather was pretty warm. I selected a pleasant-looking eclair, having pressed another of them on a lady in the company. She ate hers valiantly. I disposed of the greater part of mine amongst the marigolds, because it was sour also. We all tried to pretend we had our tea and I then went in to get my hat, which I found after some considerable search, because the man in the white coat had disappeared and nobody else knew where it was. I got my hat and I then went to the washroom—a very elaborate establishment, very handsome, but pervaded by a smell that would lift the hat off your head. The establishment buried in O'Connell Street was sanitary in comparison with it.
I am familiar with the ways of this country and I appreciated at their full value the geniality of those over-pressed waiters and waitresses, because they were very busy. People were coming in, as I was there, to the diningroom looking for evening meals. There never was the slightest evidence of impatience or discourtesy. On the contrary, they were anxious to repair what had gone wrong. I appreciated that, because we understood one another. They were very possibly neighbours' sons, and I appreciated their kindness in trying to put right what went wrong. That part of the story does not, to my mind, matter so much, the queer flabby inefficiency of producing empty teapots and sour milk and fly-blown cakes, but the dirt does matter when you go into a washroom in a hotel that holds itself out as being one of the very best in a very popular seaside resort. Imagine the impression that would be created upon our minds if, in a seaside resort in Great Britain or somewhere else, we went into a washroom and found it smelling like the very devil. Would not your first reaction be: "Let us get out of this place because, if this is the way the lavatory is kept, what must the rest of the place be like?"
I think the Irish Tourist Board would be much better employed making remonstrance to that hotel keeper, bringing him in by the hand and saying, "Look. Terrazzo is no good if you will not wash it; shining chromium-plated plumbing is no good if you will not wash it; and if you are too grand to wash the lavatory, then get out of the hotel business." I am afraid a great many hotel keepers in this country may feel that once you put in the terrazzo and the chromium you can turn the key in the door and leave the customers to wade into the lavatory because it is beneath everybody's dignity to go in with a mop every half hour and clean the place up and disinfect it decently. I think it is that kind of thing that is going to do a lot of damage. To my mind, nothing is more revolting than to go into a place, all leather and prunella, but which manifestly is being run by people who have not the faintest notion of what elementary standards of comfort are.
As against that, we all know that you can go into a thatched house in certain parts of rural Ireland which to the unsophisticated may look primitive but which you find is an hotel, the fittings of which are simple but which is a paragon of perfection for any hotel in the world. It is not that anybody or any Deputy is seeking to stipulate for elaborate equipment or anything else. All any reasonable person can ask for in this country is that amenities typical of a decent home in this country will be made available for visitors who come to stay with us. A decent home in this country is clean. Very often its fittings and equipment are antiquated; very often they are somewhat inadequate; but in a decent home they are clean and if a visitor to this country finds the sanitary accommodation clean, the rooms clean, the bedclothes clean, the table furnishing clean and the food healthy, we will have very few complaints from tourists. You can open parks and build ball alleys, erect bandstands and fountains, and if the visitors who come here go in and find a tea cloth dirty and food sour, the table cutlery, be it silver plate or pewter, greasy and manifestly unwashed, and the lavatories smelly, they will go home and say: "God forbid that we should ever find ourselves in those quarters again."
I have given one trifling experience. I can give the Minister the name of the hotel privately, later on. I would not recite that story if I thought it was a unique case or if I thought I was expecting too much of the particular hotel to which I went. I want to make it clear that it does not hold itself out to be a luxury hotel and I do not think it charges luxury prices. It is a very popular resort and I suppose the more exalted elements of our community would call it a tripperish hotel but, whatever kind of hotel it is, it should be clean and neat and decent. I think the board must be falling down on their job if, with all the inspectors they have appointed, and they had a good many—I do not know how many they have now—that hotel could get away with the inadequate service it was tendering in a district to which, I do not doubt, already a considerable number of foreign visitors have found their way.
A word in season helps more than a word spoken too late. Let the Tourist Board concentrate on that aspect of the question if they are not able to provide the materials to carry out more elaborate reforms. When I see the Irish Tourist Board delivering the goods in that very limited sphere— efficient service and cleanliness—then I will have greater confidence in committing to their care large sums of money for more ambitious schemes, but it fills me with apprehension that we should be investing this board with the very wide powers which it is intended they should exercise later on when I see that, after 18 months and with the legion of inspectors that they did at one time appoint, they cannot, within a very limited distance of this city, secure for the casual visitor a standard of cleanliness which I consider little more than primitive.
I can only say that the Tourist Board, I think, should receive the Deputy's complaint. I do not think it is fair to expect them to have abolished all smells during the time they have been at work upon this task. The Deputy's time calculation is inaccurate. I think the board have not actually been engaged on this business for half the period he has mentioned, nor have they had the inspectorial staff on that work for half the period. In fact, it is only this year that they have actively commenced the task of hotel inspection with a view to improvement. Last year, they were opening their register for the first time, and were concerned with all the problems associated with it. This year, they are more actively engaged on the task of requiring the execution of specific improvements to safeguard the maintenance of registration by hotels. There is nothing the Deputy has said with which I disagree, and that is an unusual position for me to be in.
Say no more, lest you should spoil the imposing atmosphere created by that observation.
