For fifty years visitors have been coming to the Galway Oyster Festival for the food and the fun.
A difficult year for tourism in the west of Ireland has been given a significant boost by a series of highly successful end of season festivals.
The Galway Oyster Festival which is celebrating its 50th birthday has attracted over 10,000 visitors to the city this weekend and given the economy a six million euro boost.
It's a weekend in Galway where street carnival collides with the wild and the whacky.
Michael Craughwell director of the Galway Oyster Festival says every hotel and restaurant in the city is jam packed.
The weekend is all about attracting tourists to the city for the festival. For Claes Weinstrom, a Swedish man living in Ireland, it is an absolutely fabulous event.
The festival includes the oyster opening competition. One of the challenges is to liberate 30 oysters from their shells in three minutes or less. This year the winner Olla Neilson is from Norway.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 25 September 2004. The reporter is Jim Fahy.
