The musings of "Civis" in last Tuesday's Irish Times on the growth of Dublin city draws some interesting comments from a reader.
"When I was a youth," he says, "forty years ago, the city's coastline began at Ringsend and ended at Fairview sloblands. Except for a short gravel beach where the Alexandra Basin is now, the city's seafronts were lines of docksides and quays.
"Then Dublin swallowed Clontarf, and we could bathe within city precincts. Ten years ago Sandymount and Merrion strands, and new stretches of beach at the Dollymount end, came within the domain of our Lord Mayor, aldermen and burgesses.
"But now comes the biggest jump of all. Something like ten miles of new seafronts and bathing beaches stretching through Sutton and round Howth Head to Baldoyle." The interest of these facts to my correspondent, and to all of us, is that the Corporation has acquired new opportunities and new responsibilities. As wardens of almost twenty miles of beaches and bathing grounds and of the habitats of several yacht and boat clubs, what do they propose to do about it all?
Do they realise that no other city in this part of the world is the possessor of such undeveloped seaside assets? As Admiral of the Port, the newly re-elected Lord Mayor might, I suggest, give some special attention to such nautical opportunities!
The Irish Times, July 8th, 1940.