Sir, – Trevor White claims that "Dublin is like a person stuck in a bad marriage" (Life, March 17th) and that "most people in Ireland don't like Dublin". In so doing, White asserts that people in rural Ireland (the author's shorthand for "the bit of Ireland that isn't Dublin") have a seething resentment for the capital.
However, apart from oblique references to the “anti-Dublin yarns” of some rural TDs and community radio stations, the piece falls short of providing any compelling evidence that any such resentment exists, at least on the scale the article implies.
White references an unnamed 2010 survey to substantiate his claims. This survey states that “three out of four Irish people feel no emotional connection to Dublin”. It is wrong to equate a lack of “emotional connection” with “collective disdain”, or to take from it that “bashing Dublin has long been the national sport”. You simply cannot assume that people see Dublin as “rich and arrogant” or “as a crime-riddled hole” based on this evidence, as the author does.
Perhaps most perplexingly, the article claims that “even today, many people have yet to forgive the city for conspiring with the enemy”, in reference (I think) to Dublin’s historical association with the Protestant Ascendancy and the British establishment. This is an outlandish assertion that bears no resemblance to any widely held view in the 21st century.
At this time of year, as we prepare to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, and as the eyes of the world are on Ireland, I would have hoped that readers could be spared these jaded clichés about the tensions between Dublin and “the rest of the country”.
An urban-rural divide is an inevitable feature of any society, but as someone who has lived and worked in, and is “emotionally connected” both to Dublin, and to “rural Ireland”, I can say that in my experience, no such seething resentment exists, and certainly not on the scale the author implies.
To extend the author’s metaphor, rather than sounding like a jilted lover, lamenting the way your “other half used to look at you”, White could instead use his considerable ability and skill to investigate and write about the great many things that make Ireland so unique, diverse and interesting, rather than dreaming up and exaggerating these examples of resentment and disaffection. – Yours, etc,
BARRY COLFER,
Pembroke College,
University of Cambridge.