Ireland and the Marshall Plan: E.C.A.'s Manoeuvring to Promote Dollar Tourism

Abstract

When the Economic Cooperation Administration (E.C.A.), the American agency in charge of the implementation of the Marshall Plan, was faced with an increasing balance of payments deficit in Ireland, it focused on the development of dollar tourism to bridge it. But at the beginning of the 1950s, tourism development had become an extremely sensitive topic in Irish political and government circles as well as in public opinion. Thus, from the start, the ECA's efforts were bound to meet some opposition even though the American agency had the active support of the Minister of External Affairs of the First Inter-Party Government (1948–1951). Based on unpublished American archive documents, this paper reveals the backdoor tactics used by the E.C.A. mission in Ireland to circumvent the resistance of part of the Irish government. The E.C.A.'s ruses did not succeed. However, by facilitating the exposure of some forward-looking hoteliers to the ‘American way’, familiarisation trips to the U.S. organised under the aegis of the Marshall Plan helped set a dynamic in motion. This exposure was instrumental in the development of several innovations in Irish tourism and the economic sector which attracted the attention of powerful Irish-American businessmen. The latter were subsequently to collaborate closely with the Irish government to attract strategic American investments to the country from the 1960s onwards.