Sir, - I recently returned from a three-week visit to the Basque country in Spain on the occasion of a family wedding in the small town about 20 minutes' drive from Bilbao. Apart from a very hospitable people and a beautiful landscape, I was most impressed by the civic pride of the people to keep their environment clean and by the excellent roads and trains.
Spanish people, like the Irish, like to party (fiesta); they enjoy socialising in the open on the streets, squares and beaches. But the similarity ends here, the streets are cleaned and hosed down by water trucks very early in the morning or at night. The household rubbish, including litter bins on streets and the beaches are removed at night.
Electric trains connect the small towns at short intervals at low cost: 71 pence for a half-hour journey between Guernica and Amorebieta, for example. (The Arrow from Sallins, Co Kildare to Dublin approximately the same distance is £4.50, at intervals which apparently only suit the train operators and drivers rather than the travelling public.) The train tracks and the roads (very smooth) had to be built through mountainous country with bridges, tunnels and viaducts every few kilometres, a very expensive construction!
Why, one asks, can this not be done in Ireland where the topography makes the construction of roads and rail tracks much simpler and cheaper?
At a time when this country is virtually awash with money, the infrastructure must rapidly be brought from the 19th century into the 21st. Not a bit of bypass here and a road widening there, a piecemeal hotchpotch to pacify local political interests rather than national ones.
A sound infrastructure is of vital importance to the long-term benefit of the Irish economy, the long-suffering Irish motoring public and the tourist.
I am not, however, very optimistic in seeing any improvement whilst the main priorities appear to be set out by the local politician with the loudest voice. - Yours, etc.,
H.L. Dorsch, Liffey Lawns, Clane, Co. Kildare.