Madam, – I take issue with your contention that “a break-up of the Government at this time would have been highly damaging”, (Editorial, October 12th) Damaging to whom, exactly? If you mean the country and – more specifically – its taxpayers, I could not disagree more.
A collapse of the current Government prior to enacting Nama legislation would likely have saved the Irish people billions of euro that will now be gifted to the vested banking interests at whose behest this law has been drafted.
It would have given us the chance to consider alternatives to Nama that are transparent, accountable, well-informed and economically just.
Weighed against the damage that a few weeks of electoral “uncertainty” might have caused, this would surely be a small price to pay. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Pat Bowen (Letters, October 13th) reminds us that the “birds and the bees and the cottonwood trees” don’t vote.
We should also remind ourselves that without birds, bees and cottonwood trees, there wouldn’t be any voting, or anything else for that matter. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Green Party would save this country an awful lot more money if they concentrated on making all our normal drinking water safe to drink rather on this convoluted water rate. I know that my wife and I spend at least €150 a year on avoiding the water that we were able to raise a family on 45 years ago.
Perhaps this “new” drinks industry is as valuable as the old pint was. In a country full of water this tax is just robbery and I am sure that the follow-on imported meters will add to our burden for years to come. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I suggest that the proposed relocation of the Abbey Theatre to the GPO, outlined in the renewed programme for government, is an undesirable move, compounded by the explicit connection made between the initiative and the centenary of the 1916 Rising (Home News, October 12th).
This forced marriage risks combining two national cultural assets into something that is less than the sum of their parts. Apart from the unfortunate visual symbolism of locating a 21st-century theatre in a 19th-century building, it is also crucial that there is distance between the official historical narrative for the State and the ambiguity necessary for poetry and artistic inquiry.
Furthermore, as a walk down O’Connell Street will demonstrate, the stage for the presentation of Ireland internationally, on occasions such as St Patrick’s Day, is in urgent need of development on sites other than the GPO. If the location for the new Abbey were to move back to O’Connell Street I suggest it should be in addition to a renewed GPO, possibly containing a museum of Irish achievement as proposed in the previous programme for government. – Yours, etc,