Madam, - This year the State is to spend some €1.5 billion on constructing roads. The sum, democratically welcome though it may be, is conspicuously generous at a time of rapid climate change. Meanwhile, the environmentally far more benign railway freight industry has declined into near-invisibility. Even the rigorously cost-effective container train is now a rarity.
These days politicians talk much about global warming. When are some of them going to show that they possess the statesmanship and intellectual ability to revive rail freight? - Yours, etc,
GEORGE HUXLEY, School of Classics, Trinity College, Dublin 2.