Sir, - Your Environment Correspondent, Frank McDonald, never ceases to amaze me. He is back on his old hobby-horse that if it's newly built it's bad and if it's in his dearly-loved-from-afar Connemara, then it's hound to be doubly bad.
He writes (June 24th): "On the slopes of Slievemore within sight of a deserted Famine village, there's a billboard advertising another development of 15 holiday homes, to be laid out like a suburban housing estate".
Would he prefer the landscape dotted with these monuments to hunger and misery to be fossilised and the natives to remain locked in a time-warp exporting nothing but their children? The bungalows that he so roundly condemned 10 years ago have been largely supplanted with houses that have a distinctly Irish cottage style, which in my humble opinion is a great advance on what was being built in the past. But still Frank McDonald is unhappy.
As one who was brought up in a rural area and saw most country people live in very primitive housing, I am always pleased to see the advances in rural housing. It may not fit the romantic thatched cottage image so beloved of townies, but then the rural community is as entitled to live in decent houses and attract tourists and jobs as the urban dweller. The part of the country that I was raised in was renowned for its scenery but, as the locals were quick to observe, you couldn't eat the scenery. One would think from the tone of Mr McDonald's article that the visitors who are attracted to these areas spend nothing in the local economy. What rubbish.
On the occasions when I go down that coastline, I see continuing evidence of increasing prosperity with more young people around, presumably because there are more jobs locally, and surely some of those must be in the construction and tourist industries. - Yours, etc.
Olde Forge Manor,
Belfast.