Yobs destroying potential to make East Belfast a tourist attraction

9.26.55am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 13th Jun 2006

Alliance Belfast Councillor Máire Hendron

Alliance Belfast Councillor Máire Hendron has said an attack on a visiting Indian cricket team has brought shame on an entire community, and threatens to un-do hard work being carried out to make East Belfast a tourist attraction in its own right.

The Pottinger representative stated: "This anti-social behaviour brings shame to us all, and is totally unacceptable. My first thoughts are with the cricketers who were so badly affected by it.

"This will create an appallingly negative perception of our city, and severely limits our ability to bring visitors and tourist money into East Belfast. This sort of attack is to the detriment of the entire community.

"I have been working with the Belfast Visitor & Convention Bureau, the East Belfast Partnership and other bodies alongside the City Council to encourage tourists to Belfast to venture away from the City Centre. With attractions based on George Best, CS Lewis and others, East Belfast has a lot to offer.

"Yet far from helping bring in the visitors to assist the renewal of disadvantaged communities, attacks on tourists will achieve precisely the opposite. Not only does it appear that we are determined to divide ourselves up along sectarian lines, but we seem intent on bringing racism into it too.

"Belfast is at risk, despite a decade of 'peace', of developing a tarnished reputation that will drive tourists, and tourist money, away.

People must work hard to overturn that reputation."

ENDS