Frequently Asked Questions on soc.culture.irish with answers. Send corrections, suggestions, additions, and other feedback to The FAQ maintainer.
[ Telephone numbers are given with the international dialling code preceded by a '+' and area codes enclosed in brackets '(' and ')'. Put a zero in front of Irish area codes if you are dialling from Ireland. Please let me know if any of these numbers are out of date or just wrong. ]
BORD FÁILTE (The Irish Tourist Board), Head Office, Baggot Street Bridge, Dublin 2, Ireland. +353 (1) 676 5871 or +353 (1) 661 6500 In the States 1-800 223 6470 also +1 (212) 418 0800 +1 (416) 929 2777
[ I've deleted the numbers for other countries because I've no way of checking them without straining my telephone bill. If anyone comes across a brochure or the like with the numbers, please let me know...]
In Northern Ireland:
59 North Street, Belfast BT1 1NB
Tel: (011232) 246609 - Minicom (011232) 233228
Fax: (011232) 240960
US Office:
551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 701
New York, NY 10176
Tel: (212) 922-0101 or (800) 326-0036
Fax: (212) 922-0099
Canadian Office:
111 Avenue Road, Suite 450
Toronto, Ontario M5R 3J8
Tel: (416) 925-6368
Fax: (416) 961-2175
IRISH YOUTH HOSTEL ASSOCIATION,
An Oige, Head Office, 61 Mountjoy Street,
Dublin 7, Ireland.
Membership required. 43 Hostels in Republic.
Tel +353 (1) 830 4555.
Fax +353 (1) 830 5808.
Telex 32988 IYHA EI
YOUTH HOSTEL ASSOCIATION OF NORTHERN IRELAND.
YHIANI, 56 Bradbury Place, Belfast BT7 1RU, Northern Ireland
Tel +44 (232) 324 733.
Fax +44 (232) 439 699
Membership required. 6 hostels in Northern Ireland
Be aware that the hostels affiliated to these two
official organisations usually have a curfew around 11pm!
IRISH BUDGET HOSTELS LTD.
Kinlay House, 2-12 Lord Edward Street, Dublin 2. Ireland.
Tel +353 (1) 269 7696.
Fax +353 (1) 269 7704
No membership required. 26 hostels in Republic.
INDEPENDENT HOLIDAY HOSTELS OF IRELAND
57 Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin, 1. Ireland.
Tel +353 (1) 836 4700
No membership required.
INDEPENDENT HOSTEL OWNERS INFORMATION OFFICE
Dooley Hostel, Glencolumcille, Co. Donegal
Tel +353 (73) 30130
No membership required.
Gulliver is a reservations database for Ireland run by the Tourist Board. It covers hotels, guest houses, car hire etc. All Bord Failte international offices are connected to Gulliver. Call on 1-800-600-800 in Ireland or +353 (1) 284 1765 outside Ireland to make a reservation using a credit card number to guarantee arrival.
[ This needs to be updated and expanded! ]
Music festivals are covered by ceolas at http://celtic.stanford.edu/ceolas.html
Bord Fáilte publish a booklet called "Calendar of Events" with hundreds of festivals around the country. You should be able to get a copy from your nearest Irish Tourist Board office.
Yes. Here are a few starting points. This is just a small sampling of what is available.
The ever popular yahoo...
http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Ireland/
http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/United_Kingdom/Northern_Ireland/
http://www.yahoo.ie/
Telecom Internet's Doras [Irish for "door"]
http://doras.tinet.ie/
Links under various categories
http://swift.kerna.com/
The World Wide Web Virtual Library's Irish section
http://www.itw.ie/Itw/wwwlib.html
More links
http://celtic.stanford.edu/IrishNet/
Good starting points for Northern Ireland web links
http://www.nireland.com/
http://www.niweb.com/niid/
CELT - "text material of Irish interest" (successor to Thesaurus Linguarum Hiberniae project)
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/
Tourism Information
http://www.Ireland.travel.ie/
[ gruesome, but official! ]
http://www.interknowledge.com/northern-ireland/
http://www.iol.ie/~discover/
http://www.aerlingus.ie/
http://www.fjiordlands.org/strngfrd/
http://www.hostel.ie/
The soc.culture.celtic FAQ (large chunks of this FAQ are taken from it!) should remind
you that Ireland is only one country with Celtic roots. The current version is at
http://www.scot.demon.co.uk/celtfaq.html
(The old version is still available at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/gaelic/sccfaq.html)
Book shops with a Web presence
http://www.adnet.ie/hannas/
http://www.galway.iol.ie/resource/kennys/
http://www.readireland.ie/
http://www.iol.ie/~readout/gael.html
Irish Newspapers on the Web
http://ireland.iol.ie/andersonstown-news/
http://www.emigrant.ie/
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
http://www.examiner.ie/
http://www.irish-times.ie/
http://www.sbpost.ie/
http://www.irishnews.com/
http://www.irishvoice.com/
http://www.irlnet.com/aprn/
http://www.tribune.ie/
Some Irish writers are lucky enough (through fame and timely death) to have their work
on the web. There's a search engine at Carnegie-Mellon that can help find them.
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/authorsearch?Yeats
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/search?author=joyce+james&amode=start
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/search?author=Shaw+George+Bernard&mode=start
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/search?author=Swift+Jonathan&amode=start
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/search?author=Wilde+Oscar&amode=start
A good source for Irish poetry (from the living and the dead) can be found at
http://spinfo1.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~dm/eire.html
An excellent jump list for politics in Ireland is provided by the UCD Politics
Department at
http://www.ucd.ie/~politics/irpols.html
General business info
http://www.itw.ie/
http://www.iol.ie/~aidanh/business/
The government in Dublin
http://www.irlgov.ie/
http://www.revenue.ie/
The Constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann)
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/Constitution/
There are news recordings in English and Irish from RTE Radio on the World Radio
Network on:
http://www.wrn.org/stations/rte.html
The site is a RealAudio site so you'll need the RealAudio player.
If you really want to go to town you can also view today's Aertel teletext
pages on:
http://www.rte.ie/
at RTE's own web site.