Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to stay, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact - George Eliot

I’m actually amazed sometimes how British people somehow assume that Ireland is part of the UK. Despite the fact that our national currency is the Euro, Brits don’t seem to see much difference between their shores and ours. For example, I was in Cineworld (formerly UGC) last Thursday night and they had Play.com ads on display with all the prices listed in British Pounds. It doesn’t matter how much the ads say we can save because the price is meaningless to a lot of Irish people, they can’t compare it to the price they’ve seen in any retailer unless they happen to know the exchange rate.

The exact same applies for the press. I don’t know how many times I’ve flicked through the Star and the Sunday Times only to be confronted with English brand names or prices. When referring to prices I’m not talking about the use of British Pounds, but the lazy journalism that involves running the British figure through a calculator and asuming the Euro equivalent is what it costs in Ireland. Pick up the Sunday Times motoring supplement and you’d swear that you could get a bargain any day of the week thanks to their marvellous mathematics.

This seems like quite a fickle point, but in general Irish people want to read about Irish news, so what’s of interest in the UK might not be of interest in Ireland. Then you’ve got Irish culture to contend with - any foreigners I deal tend to get quite a laugh when they hear about the Irish Farmers Journal, the Rose of Tralee or the National Ploughing Championships. It seems Father Ted wasn’t that far off the mark!