DAMIAN FLINTER,
Sir, - If T. Murphy (January 23rd) can drag himself away from the pleasures of shooting his scattergun at the messenger, perhaps he will allow me to reply to one or two of his many self-contradictory misconceptions.
For example, he asserts that the fact of many of these trader/Travellers having vehicles "from many different parts of Ireland and the UK" disposes of my contention that Travellers, as a rule (if unwritten), are marginalised and dispossessed. There are many non-traveller expatriates with UK and other accents who would be happy enough to provide Mr Murphy with a primary level education in the history of population displacement from this island.
He goes on to deny my assertion that these scrap merchants were "disposing of our post-consumption durables" before blithely confirming that the waste desecrating the Dodder originated from "driveways. . . hedges. . .gardens, roofing. . .gutters. . .chimneys, etc., old furniture, TVs, radiators, sinks, central-heating oil tanks" and the remains of car-stripping - all the consequences of our sedentary consumer culture.
As for his (her?) contention that "Mr Flinter saw none of this", I was raised in the region and swam and fished the Dodder and beyond into Wicklow where I watched in disgust the expansion of complacent degradation, from the military destruction of the Glen of Imaal where my father and uncles fished and camped before my brothers and friends ever did, and remember well the blame heaped, with the scrap, on the Travellers around Clondalkin in the 1970s as the city ate into the fertile soils of the Liffey Valley.
If I appear one-sided in my arguments, it is not that I am ignorant of the transgressions of our Traveller population, but that, given their exclusion (as shown by the school closure in Co Galway contemporaneous with the Holy Cross intimidation) from mainstream society, I feel it is incumbent of those of us more privileged to take a more balanced, honest and objective view.
Banging the Lambeg from behind our "brand new concrete walls" and trying to personalise the issues is little contribution to solving this ugly reflection on us all. - Yours, etc.,
DAMIAN FLINTER,
Clifden,
Co Galway.