Having welcomed 2013 in a wet and windy Republic of Ireland, it was hard to avoid posters and radio adverts trying to highlight The Gathering. It all sounded pretty good and exciting from looking at the posters but it doesn’t take too long to realise that this is just a money spinner from the national government.

Ireland’s economy was severely hit in 2008 when it became the first country within the European Union to officially enter a recession. Today it has the second-highest level of household debt in the world, despite a €85 billion ‘bailout’ from the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund in 2010.

Also hitting the news in County Kerry (where I was staying) at the start of 2013, was the news that 62% of funding for the North East Kerry Development and South Kerry Development schemes was being spent on administration – a ridiculously high figure and a sign that Ireland’s financial climate is clearly all over the place.

The problem Ireland faces is the ‘brain drain’ – that young people (those under 30 with degrees), are seeking jobs elsewhere; in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – leaving behind an elderly population that simply does not have a sustainable means to provide a brighter economic future.

This leads me nicely back to The Gathering. The idea of which is to quite literally welcome back with open arms anybody who claims to have Irish ancestry into the country (it is believed that 70 million people worldwide claim to be part-Irish), in the hope that they will spend their money in Ireland and get the economy going again.

The idea you see is to create several thousand such ‘gatherings’ throughout 2013, focusing on sport or music or business or culture, starting with the first official ‘gathering’ which took place a few days ago on New Year’s Eve in Dublin.

There are many critics of The Gathering, with the general consensus that it is simply a tourism-led initiative to make as much money as possible – the words ‘shameful’ and ‘embarrassing’ were used a lot.

One thing is for sure, it’s going to take a lot more than a sports event in Tipperary or a music festival in Galway to kick-start the economy of one of the most welcoming and generous countries I have ever visited.

For more information on The Gathering, you can check out the website here: http://thegatheringireland.com/