SHANE BUTLER,
Sir, - The recent closure of Lincoln's Inn has become the occasion of a generalised and intemperate attack on Trinity College by Robert O'Byrne (An Irishman's Diary, April 15th).
It is inaccurate and unfair to attribute the decline of Pearse Street as a commercial environment solely to Trinity's acquisition of properties here, without reference to the role of motor traffic. Pearse Street is a major route into the city centre from the south-east. It has constant heavy traffic, no parking or safe set-down facilities for would-be shoppers, and is unpleasant for pedestrians.
Business people who held leases from Trinity gradually surrendered them, not because of pressure from their landlord, but because they no longer saw their businesses as viable in this environment.
The last business to close on the south side of Pearse Street was in a building not owned by Trinity.
The historic buildings which have been recently acquired in D'Olier Street and Foster Place are listed as protected structures in the current City Development Plan, which greatly restricts the college's authority to alter them. In any event, as the thousands of visitors who come onto our campus annually seem to appreciate, Trinity has a tradition of valuing architectural merit, rather than being the vandal suggested by Robert O'Byrne.
It is the intention of the college to reopen Lincoln's Inn and the other retail premises which it owns along Lincoln Place as soon as possible.
Trinity has recently become part of the local RAPID scheme for the south-east inner city and is committed to playing its part with Dublin City Council, and in partnership with local residents and business people, in the overall rejuvenation of this area.
Underlying this attack on Trinity is a conviction that it has become too big. Obviously, the expansion which has occurred in teaching and research over the past decade cannot go on indefinitely, but we hope to continue to provide facilities that will attract the best and the brightest undergraduates, graduates and staff to Trinity and to Dublin. - Yours, etc.,
SHANE BUTLER, Community Liaison Officer, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
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A chara, - Robert O'Byrne's public rebuke to Trinity College for its lack of concern for the preservation of the historic buildings under its care in Lincoln Place and Pearse Street, and now also in D'Olier Street and Foster Place, is, I am afraid to say, only too well deserved.
He is kind enough not to mention the worst example of architectural vandalism, namely the transformation of Thomas Burgh's magnificent Old Library (1712-1732), surpassing that of Sir Christopher Wren at Trinity College Cambridge, into a tourist shop.
I am surprised that in a matter of such public and national importance the Minister for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands has not hitherto intervened.
It would be good to think that the recently reconstituted board of Trinity College Dublin will take a more enlightened view of its civic and national responsibilities. - Is mise,
GERALD MORGAN FTCD, School of English, Trinity College, Dublin 2.