Madam, - I laughed when I read Senator Feargal Quinn's piece on the information society (Opinion & Analysis, February 2nd). I laughed, not because what he was saying in the main did not make sense, but because of his suggestion that Estonia was "far more backward in many respects than Ireland".
Lest we lose the run of ourselves in the charge of the Celtic Tiger, perhaps we might reflect that Estonia generally has a very Nordic rather than Eastern European bias, contrary to popular notion; that it has virtually 100 per cent take-up of broadband (compared with some 22 per cent in Ireland and incredibly only 30 per cent of businesses use it here); that it has nearly 80 per cent Wi-Fi coverage (Ireland has about 0.5 per cent); that it has a cultured and talented workforce with significant earnings and high property ownership (though certainly not as high as in Ireland); that it has a vastly superior transport network to that found in this country.
So, to describe Estonia in such dismissive terms is quite misleading, considering our own disastrous record here in transport (including the consistently highest road death toll in Europe), waste management (or the complete lack of it) and the environment, high levels of serious crime and an inherently embedded drug culture among all classes.
These, unfortunately, are the facts. Just because we have a Celtic Tiger factor does not make us any better than Estonians or indeed any of the other recent EU arrivals. - Yours, etc,
DAVID LYONS, South Frederick Street, Dublin 2.