Sir, - Mr Martin Pawley, in his pitiful effort to defend the proposed Spencer Dock Development, is reported (The Irish Times, March 7th) as saying there are one or two problems on the periphery. Well, I happen to be one of those peripheral "problems" Mr Pawley mentioned. Here in East Wall there are a few thousand of us "problems" who don't find this proposed high rise development quite such an aesthetic breakthrough for Dublin as Mr Pawley does, but then he will not have to live beside the buildings.
The benefits to residents of areas affected by this development because of rising land values are of little use. We still need homes to live in, and the fact that they may be worth triple their current value just means that we will be lucky enough to own houses that many of us could not possibly afford to buy at today's values, let alone tomorrow's prices.
The visual impact may not be much from the city centre but it would be enormous for the residents of East Wall and we stand to lose a great deal of sunlight for much of the year. The site needs to be developed but we should be careful not to repeat the architectural errors of previous years. One has to ask the question: What chance would a proposal like this have in an area such as Sandymount, for example? - Yours, etc.,
Terry Butler, East Wall, Dublin 3.