This is the story of a modern Irish success. It tells of the courage and inventiveness of people like Brendan O'Regan, Chairman of the Shannon Free Airport Development Company who with minimal assistance, harnessed an airport set in swap land on the South West Coast of Ireland to an Industrial Complex and brought prosperity and employment to a diminishing and depressed population.

Ireland' past, particularly rich and fecund in the Shannon region, was made part of its present as tourists visiting the Shannon Airport Duty Free Shop(the first of its kind) were conducted on tours to the ancient Castle in County Clare.

One learns how the old trades, blacksmiths, potters, weavers and thatchers were revitalised and fostered not just as tourist gimmicks but as living and virile expressions of Irish skill and workmanship. Shannon in County Clare is the story of Ireland in miniature, reaching out on the one hand to the American Continent and on the other to Europe, accepting from each its best skills and traditions and absorbing elements from all into it's own distinctive mould.

Presented and Produced by Donncha Ó Dúlaing

First Broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 - 09th August 1970

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