Sir, - I grew up in a dreary Ireland. All was intolerance, desolation, prejudice, compulsory Irish and limited resources. But that was not all. Self-expression in any shape or form was forbidden. Any effort to remove the repressive lid that was kept firmly down on new or different ideas was confronted head on.
For me, the people who vehemently oppose a national stadium never left that era. The schoolmaster scowl is donned and the strap taken to every forward-looking idea. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. To measure a national stadium in terms of money displays a total lack of vision.
The relationship between sport and human expression is one of the most wonderful gifts on earth. It is the only healthy drug and a necessary human emotion. A national stadium will give young people a sense of identity and pride, something to look up to and aim at. If there is going to be, on Irish soil, a truly democratic spot where prejudice and intolerance are faced down, where human hope is united in one desire, where people from every persuasion and every walk of life rub shoulders on a level playing field, it is in a national stadium.
How in God's name can that be measured in punts? - Yours, etc.,
B. Newman, Greenfields, Limerick.