Sir, - As an infrequent visitor to Ireland I get to see the dramatic results of the past 10 years of economic expansion. Our talentless legislators have let the civil engineers and town planners facilitate wholesale wrecking of our landscape by a few property developers and construction companies. The roads have been forcibly stretched wider from town to town. We can now hurry at 90 m.p.h. from traffic jam to traffic jam.
The suburbs have sprawled with artless houses sanctioned by culturally void bureaucrats and the philistine men in Mercedes cars who really run this banana republic. Crummy, ugly houses continue to be built along main roads so people can have their own portion of countryside road to disfigure. I suppose they build these worthless boxes so as to escape artificially high land prices in towns and the lousy services provided.
My analysis is that our third-rate politicians have been empowered by an electorate unable to understand the compromises needed to manage development intelligently. They have run this messed-up State like teenagers having a house party.
If there was a functioning, fair planning system it would help. If it was not compromised by the meddling of the witless local councillors we call TDs then we might have had a country where the new money had meant improvement for all. Instead, money piles up at the doors of the very, very few who live in houses a long way from the urban sprawl and urban disorder they have lorded over.
What makes me so sad is that the public don't really care. So, I am glad I do not live in Ireland any more. - Yours, etc.,
Richard Herriott, Laindon, Essex, England.