Sir, – Frank McDonald’s article “Taking Liberties with skatepark?” (January 16th) brings into light our city fathers’ attitude towards skating.
While not providing a proper skatepark in the city centre for young skaters, they have gone about stopping them whenever they can.
Across the Liffey at the bottom of Smithfield, skaters would use a very small area to practise the tricks using some stone seating ( here is enough to go around both sitters and skaters), what did our city fathers do? Attach metal studs to the seats and so stopped the fun.
These skaters never bothered anyone – in fact they drew a crowd. But fun is to be frowned upon and this is at the heart of the matter: our city fathers are not in the business of encouraging fun. – Yours, etc,