There’s been a healthy surge of Irish visitors to the Rock of Cashel since it reopened earlier this week.
The popular OPW site has had to restrict the total number of visitors on site each day to 900, as part of plans to allow for increased social distancing.
This August weekend would usually be a bumper couple of days for the site, with 3,700 people visiting The Rock for the Bank Holiday Monday last year.
With the drop in overseas tourists, Site Manager Elaine Moriarty says they’ve seen plenty of interest from people in this country:
“There’s a lot of Irish people, which is great to see. The phonecalls coming in, they’ve been from Wexford, from Kerry, from Donegal, from Dublin, Waterford, Cork, and all over everywhere.
“And then we’ve had some international travellers as well obviously that are in the country. They’ve been arriving as well and delighted to have a place open that they can walk around.”
Elaine also says the lower visitor numbers this year have allowed workers to settle back in safely:
“It’s nice and relaxing and it was nice for the staff this week, I guess, to have people coming in the way they were – for us to get used to the new system and for staff to get used to how people were reacting coming in.
“And you know, it’s an open site and people can walk around comfortably.”
