Madam, - Following his devastating description of the botched Luas project, Dr Garret FitzGerald (June 28th) suggests some causes of the disaster.
He points to the fact that economists were not engaged for the advance studies, which appeared to involve only engineers, but I would say that this is not an explanation in itself. The question is: why were economists not engaged?
The fact is that the decision-makers in our Government system are inheritors of a culture which recoils from any type of technical professionalism.
Let us remember that the first action taken by the new managers of the infant Irish State was the removal of farm economics and rural science from the curriculum of the national schools. Readers might ponder this fact and see what light it throws on the management style of our Governments ever since.
It seems only too appropriate that the key decisions in the case of Luas were taken by a schoolteacher, and that the project was named in Irish. - Yours, etc.,
DONAL FLYNN, Breffni Terrace, Sandycove, Co Dublin.