Sir, - Councillor Richard Greene's otherwise excellent letter (Irish Times, June 17th) regarding Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council's plan to build 16 halting sites between Dalkey and Rathfarnham, does miss one rather obvious point.
As a politician, he must see that the policy of resting absolute decision-making power with the county manager is just another superficially clever move by the government, which introduced the policy in the first place. In other words, when the halting sites finally go up, and there is widespread local outrage, politicians can simply shrug their shoulders and blame it all upon the county manager. So, no votes lost there, hopefully.
Incidentally, why can you never find an eco-warrior when you really need one? County Council bureaucrats (Dun Laoghaire/ Rathdown) are about to despoil a wooden area of natural beauty (the Dodder Linear Park), with an ugly concrete development (a permanent halting site), right beside a listed building of historical importance (the Ely Gate arch), but I have yet to see one eco-protect tree house built, or one tunnel network excavated, to thwart the bulldozers. Perhaps eco-warriors are afraid of the suburbs? I think we should be told. - Yours, etc., Helen McClelland,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.