Sir, - I am gravely concerned about the future of the brown paper bag industry in Ireland. All of these exposes and tribunals have had a dramatic effect on sales, and without Government intervention we may end up with a brown paper bag mountain of our own.
The Government is unwilling to intervene, on the grounds that the old-style bags are obsolete, being too small to carry the full weight of their current(cy) expectations. They also argue that the modern bag is not "feline proof", with cats escaping from bags all over the place.
Like any other industry, the bag men of old will have to change with the times, and create a new product, a buy-u-degrading, soft, disposable, brown paper wipe, large enough to conceal a bank draft once, but durable enough to be used endlessly by our politicians, to wipe the eye of the Irish people well into the next millennium. - Yours, etc.,
Esmond Reilly, Ard na Mara, Malahide, Co Dublin.