DENIS HURLEY,
Madam, - God help me in my ignorance. I used to think that "gateways" were something that you drove a herd of animals through. It's back to school for us all to learn the new lexicon of this National Spatial Strategy. Unravel this if you can. Engines of industry will assemble in the "hubs" and feed into the "gateways", which are linked, of course by "strategic radial corridors" crossed by "strategic linked corridors". The new gospel according to Mr Martin Cullen. Visionary stuff - or would have been 20 years ago!
Now that Leinster, let alone Dublin, is gridlocked, is it only now that the inevitable has dawned on the powers that be? Could this ground-breaking news be designed to keep us spatially distracted from the "good news" about to be foisted on us on Wednesday? This Government is not short of strategic blather. - Yours, etc.,
R. JEFFERS, Brannoxtown, Naas, Co Kildare.
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Madam, - People travelling from the Beara peninsula to Dublin are still in Co Cork when half their journey is completed. Why, then, in the Government's long-awaited spatial strategy report published last week, in which we were told that everybody would be near to a gateway or a hub, only Cork city and Mallow were designated? Or has the south-west just drifted off and nobody told us? - Yours, etc.,
DENIS HURLEY, Kilbrittain, Co Cork.
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Madam, - You report that Tuam has been designated by the Government as a national development "hub". This is two weeks after the State railway company severed the town's connection to the national rail network. Am I still in time to propose that this year's Todd Andrews Award for Public Planning should be shared between Mr Martin Cullen and Iarnród Éireann? - Yours, etc.,
HUGO BRADY BROWN, Stratford on Slaney, Baltinglass, Co Wicklow.
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Madam, - And I thought a BMW hub was a car component! - Yours, etc.,
DON HEENAN, Williamstown, Rathvilly, Co Carlow.