LOUIS O'FLAHERTY,
Madam, - With all our experience to call on, why do we find it so hard to cope with rain in this country? On Thursday we had a couple of inches of it in Dublin - a substantial amount, but not exactly unprecedented - and we had ample warning of it. So what happens? Traffic chaos, disruption of train services, flooding of housing estates, etc. At one time this State had aspirations to drain the Shannon basin. Now it seems we can't even drain our streets.
Moreover, our national railway company seems incapable of implementing the most elementary principles of drainage. On Thursday evening, to reach my homeward DART service at Lansdowne Road (having been prevented from reaching Grand Canal Dock by a small lake across Grand Canal Street), I first had to paddle through a subway which had become a sump, and then splash along a platform apparently designed to retain water rather than let it drain away. And at Bray the new bridge has been constructed so that every step retains water, with a particularly large puddle on every landing. Does no-one take any pride in engineering any more? - Yours, etc.,
G.R. WRIGHT, Old Connaught Avenue, Bray, Co. Wicklow.
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Madam, - I have just driven through submerged Dublin streets, probably the worst floods since 1954. Interestingly, the heaviest flooding seem to have occurred where road improvements have been carried out in recent years.
Will the contractors be held responsible? - Yours, etc.,
LOUIS O'FLAHERTY, Lorcan Drive, Dublin 9.