VERA HUGHES,
Madam, - With reference to David Connolly's impassioned letter (December 18th) about "snart-arsery" and the Rabelaisan naming of Dublin's new spire, surely the Government has got its priorities arse-wise.
Basics should come before luxuries. Bread, before cake, unlike Marie Antoinette's glib solution for the French revolutionary rabble. On the one hand there are third-world schools throughout this country with leaking roofs and an army of rodents in residence. There are hospital outpatient departments like refugee camps, with doctors and nurses run off their feet, and there's no money in the public purse. On the other hand we have a shiny spike soaring into the sky in O'Connell Street, costing millions we don't have, that Mr Connolly thinks "will improve the quality of life in the city." How exactly it will do that, perhaps he could tell us.
He suggests the monument "will provide a reason to gaze up at the sky." A very good reason indeed, I would imagine, for the good burghers and visitors alike to be spared the unlovely sight of streets awash with filth and rubbish!
But, since we are now stuck with the Folly, and for what it's worth, here's my choice of name for it: "An Túr Solais". So, instead of buses making for the late departed 'An Lár' their destination will now be "An Túr". - Yours, etc.,
VERA HUGHES, Moate, Co Westmeath.
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Madam , - The why? in the sky. - Yours, etc.,
PETER DUNN, Sydenham Road, Dublin 4.