Madam, - John Simington (March 24th) joins the simplistic "bungalow blight" brigade with his naive suggestion that people should be encouraged to live in towns and villages rather than in the open countryside.
He is naive because the infrastructure to take additional population does not exist in most towns and villages.
Neither have the planners produced the necessary attractive designs or local authorities insisted on layouts that would make towns and villages places that people would prefer to live in.
Where Mr Simington's ideas become ludicrous is when he suggests that a spirit of community is more likely to exist in "a concentration of housing in towns and villages", when all the evidence is that a true sense of community, thankfully, has been retained in the townlands of the open countryside.
Finally, Mr Simington does not seem to understand that the traditional English form of village habitation has existed for centuries whereas the tradition in the 32 counties has been to live in the open countryside.
Unfortunately, British planners are now determined to foist their ideas on a Northern Ireland that deserves better. - Yours, etc,
DECLAN MacPARTLIN, Baylands, Camolin, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.