Madam, - When dining with good friends in the beautiful village of Tuamgraney, I asked if Edna O'Brien's family home was nearby. I was told it was "up the road" and, in fact, for sale. Further enquiries disclosed that the writer's five-bedroomed home was indeed on the market with planning permission for a 35-bed nursing home and outline planning permission for 30 houses.
Edna O'Brien crash-landed onto the literary arena of 1960s Ireland, red hair ablaze with irreverent disregard for our pillar-of-the-establishment censorship board and its stultifying stranglehold on Irish writers and readers.
The publication of The Country Girls, The Girl with Green Eyes and Girls in their Married Bliss banished forever the notion of comely Irish maidens dancing at the crossroads. Mná na h-Éireann could now emerge footloose and fancy-free to join their legendary Irish Rover menfolk.
Should Clare County Council consider the purchase of this entire property as a residence for artists, like Annaghmakerrig in Co Monaghan, where writers, painters and musical composers could spend periods of creative activity? Or could part of the estate become a sanctuary for creative artists, like the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island? Perhaps someone with vision could come forward with a worthwhile proposal.
In the future, when tour buses stop to point out the place where Edna O'Brien's childhood home once stood, it will be too late to act. We are already embarrassed by the establishment's demolition of Lady Gregory's Coole Park.
After all, for our liberation from the Forces of Establishment Darkness, the State owes Edna O'Brien some service. Question is: Do we know it? - Yours, etc.,
MARY GALLAGHER MACBRIDE, Cúlfraoich, Creeslough, Co Donegal.