Sir, - As a native of Galway, 20 years ago I first heard the slogan "we are the fastest growing city in Europe". Twenty years on, we see the lack of planning, consultation and sensitivity to the city's sewerage problem. Galway Corporation's officials and elected representatives have failed to take on in time one of the most basic responsibilities of local government.
Galway is now going to ruin its seaward views with the Mutton Island development, continuing an appalling, fragmented planning policy which has ignored the potential of restoring the run-down but atmospheric and historical environment of the city centre. Instead we have ugly, bland and increasingly tatty developments with only a few honourable exceptions.
Interestingly, a smokescreen has been created, leading to Mr Ray McBride and other brave objectors being accused of allowing the pollution of the bay to continue. A crass editorial in the Galway Advertiser even denounced the "thoroughly objectional seizure of the moral high ground by those who call themselves ecologists and environmentalists".
The city did not grow overnight. The responsibility for this mess lies with Galway Corporation's flawed and stubborn patterns of thinking - as it will in five years' time when the plant may need to be expanded, at escalating cost, and the citizenry realise the full impact of the visual and olfactory pollution; as it will in 20 years' time when future citizens and visitors to Galway will be amazed at such costly environmental blunders that have destroyed the very reasons that made the city worth seeing and living in. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Conroy
Ontario Terrace, Dublin 6.