Madam, - It is a great irony that on the very day the details of Minister for the Environment Dick Roche's decision on Tara and the M3 motorway were published in this newspaper (The Irish Times, May 12t), a special report on Meath County Council noted that, of 360 Meath-Dublin commuters interviewed in Ashbourne, Ratoath and Dunshaughlin, 91 per cent would take a job closer to their home if one were available, in order to stop having to commute. Moreover, the 1,709 people registered on the Meath Skills Database have expressed "anti-commuting sentiments". For whom, then, is the motorway to be built, and for what is our national heritage to be sacrificed?
Given a choice, most people do not want to travel long distances to work by car. Most want to work in their own towns and villages and in the countryside. Some want to avail of the technological revolution and work from home. And, if they must commute to work, most people would prefer to travel by a well-run train that would allow the journey time to be used for reading or relaxing.
Because this government runs an ill-advised abstract economy, and not a society, it has naturally come adrift from the needs of the society it purports to serve. While many of us may have family members who are working, or once worked, in the US, rationally we know that this tiny republic is not "closer to Boston than Berlin". It cannot support the degree of centralisation and the breadth and density of road-making that is presently envisaged on an American scale. A small landmass is best served by self-sufficient, inter-connected regional and local centres, by a superior aviation service, an efficient, intelligently networked rail system, and a political vision that favours quality of life over stark utilitarianism and economic productivity at any price.
It is poetic justice that Tara, the lexicon of monumental antiquity and allegory of Irish kingship, should highlight our rulers' folly. - Yours, etc.,
Dr ELIZABETH FITZPATRICK, Ballyhale, Co Galway.
Madam, Whatever one might think about the rights and wrongs of the extensive archaeological and development invasion of the Tara/Skryne landscape, perhaps a framework for considering such problems, both in Co Meath and elsewhere in the country, is to be found in the work of Henry David Thoreau.
Writing in 1854 he states: "Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at, as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
So, what is important about connecting between Meath and Dublin that it has to be achieved one or two hours faster, and indeed what serious things are people going to do with the time thus saved? - Yours, etc,
UNA MacCONVILLE, NICHOLAS MAXWELL, Killegar, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow.