Madam, - Prof J. Peter Clinch (August 14th) assures us that there is a planning school in Ireland. I wish the planners of Mayo County Council would attend.
We in Ballinrobe have, within our boundaries, the ruins of a 900 year old Augustinian Abbey, of which President Robinson remarked: "The significance to a community of having within its town or parish evidence of previous generations' work, lifestyles and history, should not be underestimated. The work now completed is a testimony to the dedication and commitment of Fás and the people of Ballinrobe."
If there is anything of which we have a superabundance in Mayo, it is space. Yet the council has decided to fill the area around the abbey with special housing between the abbey ruins and the River Robe - the supply source of the Monks' staple diet of fish - and an upright concrete two storey "shoe box" at the main abbey entrance.
Please, readers, wherever you are, prevent this sacrilege - for the Mayo planners are not for turning.
Are you still there, Prof Clinch? - Yours, etc.,
WALTER H. LOUGHREY, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo.