Madam, - Barbara Delanty (February 25th) asks whether the opponents of the Greystones marina plan have an alternative. She will be relieved to hear that we do.
Since as far back as 1987 Wicklow County Council has had the objective, not of restoring Greystones harbour, but of constructing a "yachting centre" with attendant commercial development. The council has pursued this idea single-mindedly and with complete disregard for the public opinion which opposed them. In 1998, in an effort to persuade the council that a more sensitive development was possible, community groups designed a plan for a small-scale redevelopment of the existing harbour. Having ignored this plan for five years, the council eventually employed the very consultants which had designed and championed the huge development we are now facing to carry out an "independent" evaluation of the community plan.
Your readers can, I'm sure, guess the outcome of that particular exercise. So the answer is yes, the plan is there. It is simply a matter of getting the local authority to take it seriously. - Yours, etc,
FIACHRA ETCHINGHAM, Mountainview Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow.