Madam, - I was saddened by the decision of the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company board not to award the contract for the Carlisle Pier redevelopment to Daniel Libeskind.
My concern is not with the architectural or commercial merits of the various designs but with the obligatory cultural element.
Libeskind's proposed Diaspora Museum was the only one of the four shortlisted proposals to acknowledge Carlisle Pier's historic association with the protracted trauma of Irish emigration.
Over 140 years, thousands of Irish emigrants, mostly young single men and women, walked on to that pier to take the mail boat to England. Most believed they would return in a year or two; few did.
Libeskind, himself an emigrant, picked up on the resonance of the term "mail boat" but saw it as symbolising the outreach of the Irish to those abroad.
He missed its more vital significance; it was the conduit for the millions of pounds of emigrants' remittances which those men and women, by hard labour and sacrifice, faithfully posted home to keep others alive and to give them a future in their own country.
Their reward, then, it seems is to have their memories airbrushed out at the very point of departure.
In the words of Paul Ricoeur, "to be forgotten, and written out of history, is to die again".
How ironic that the last sentence in Dónall Mac Amhlaigh's famous memoir, Dialann Deoraí (Diary of an Exile), in the context of yet another departure from the Carlisle Pier on the mail boat for England, where he comments on the good fortune of "those who can stay behind here", should be, "We're a great people, surely".
Aren't we, just. . . - Yours, etc.,
ULTAN COWLEY,
Rathangan,
Duncormick,
Co Wexford.
Madam, - As one who campaigned for many years for the establishment of a harbour board in Dún Laoghaire, I recant.
While under the benign neglect of three Government departments and the Office of Public Works, who understood that a harbour was a safe haven for boats, it was safe from predators.
I shall not vote for any candidate or party which supports the disposal of Carlisle Pier to property developers under the thinly disguised veil of providing a museum. - Yours, etc.,
NOIRIN BUTLER,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - Once again Dún Laoghaire public officials have revealed their "Kingstown" mindset with their selection of a boring and pedestrian building over the landmark design of Daniel Libeskind.
Dún Laoghaire is ever fated to be a fading pseudo British Victorian seaside borough. - Yours, sincerelyetc.,
KEITH NOLAN,
Caldragh,
Carrick-on-Shannon.
Madam, - Why did we fill out comment cards, and 47 per cent of us deem the Daniel Libeskind-designed building to be our favourite, only for our opinion to be ignored in favour of an office-like building jutting into Dún Laoghaire Harbour? An opportunity to put Ireland on the world architecture map has been lost. - Yours etc.
MARK FLEMING,
Merrion Village,
Merrion Road,
Dublin.