A chara, - In replying to Frank McDonald's article on Sligo Inner Relief Road (May 5th) we would first like to point out some inaccuracies.
College Road is not a leafy country lane. It has become a busy filter road and is dangerously narrow. Neither is it or has it ever been a cul-de-sac.
Mr McDonald claims that most of the 52 houses to be demolished are lived in. In fact only 40 houses are due for demolition and only 14 of those are lived in.
The article's accompanying map gives the lie to the assertion that the inner relief road runs through the heart of Sligo. The road can be seen to skirt along the edge of the "historic and commercial centre".
By contrasting the opinions of the National Roads Authority with those of one resident, the article takes the populist line of pitting unfeeling bureaucracy against the little person. However the opinions of those Sligo people who support the road do not seem to have been sought. The Chamber of Commerce, the majority of both local Councils and a large majority of the town's residents who attended both public displays of the road plans all favour the inner relief road.
We are residents of Sligo who live along the N4 route now used by traffic to and from Hughes Bridge, perhaps not in the "fine houses" vaunted by Mr McDonald but nevertheless we feel we deserve to be heard. Nobody will have to live along the planned inner relief road and suffer the noise, pollution and structural damage that we have endured for the past 11 years. Should the route be changed, going by past experience, it could take another 20 years to put an alternative in place. Sligo could not survive that. - Yours, etc., Fran Hegarty, Temple Street, Mary Burns, Temple Street, Joe Clarke, Hanley Terrace,
Sligo.