Madam, - I endorse Michael Connaghan's view (May 20th) that the Government should be "articulating a vision for contemporary leisure". I think he has hit the nail squarely on the head. Besides restaurants, which realistically cannot be a regular form of leisure due to cost, there are few alternatives to pubs in the evening in Ireland.
Wander round Dublin in the evening ignoring the pubs, and the only life you'll see is convenience shops providing fags for the drinkers out on the town, fast-food outlets refuelling people with salty, stodgy soakage for further assaults on licensed premises and gangs of young people (presumably the ones whose fake IDs aren't up to scratch) hanging around looking serious as it is the only leisure pursuit open to them.
May I suggest that the Government, as well as articulating a vision of leisure, should take concrete steps to realise it: libraries, museums (and their cafés) and parks should remain open until 9 p.m.; swimming pools should be built and extended and focused more on adult leisure as opposed to being aquatic crêches. Also, I believe licensing laws should be looked at imaginatively to provide café-style bars where limited alcohol is available. - Yours, etc.,
ALLAN HORGAN,
Brookwood,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Madam, - Reducing pub-closing hours would not solve the problem of violence on the streets. All it would do is bring it forward an hour.
Is violence more tolerable at 11 p.m. than at midnight? - Yours, etc.,
HUGH CAHILL,
Burnaby Heights,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.