Sir, - Peter Donnelly (September 1st) states that the Republic is no more litter-strewn than Britain or most of Europe. I cannot agree. I have been resident in Germany and in the US these past 12 years and have travelled frequently on business throughout Europe. Every year I return to Dublin at least twice and get to see other parts of Ireland at least once.
Vienna, Paris, Rome, San Fransisco, Chicago, Detroit, Munich, Amsterdam and London may all have litter in varying amounts; but only Dublin offers up that strange conconction of diesel and chip-bag smells in the air, tin cans and dog doodoos on the ground. The people of Dublin have a wonderful, divil-may-care attitude when it comes to tossing an empty cigarette pack over their shoulders. On the outskirts of the city you see the bedsprings sticking from a ditch; in the Dublin mountains you are likely to stop and photograph a dumped toilet at the side of the road.
As a Dubliner, I was surprised at the vigour with which an older man hunted down a rogue scrap of paper in wind-blown Chicago. I was, and remain, impressed by the number and variety of street-cleaning vehicles that roam around various European cities.
If other Irish cities and towns are as dirty as Dublin, I have not noticed it. The view that Dublin is a dirty city is widely held and, in my honest opinion, is still true. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Hogarty,
Paderborn,
Germany.