JANE BEHAN,
Madam, - Having heard more and more discussion over the weekend on the trees in O'Connell Street and the grand plans for the thoroughfare, I cannot help but feel that the priority should be to police the street so well that the public feels safe walking, shopping, sitting and enjoying it. As it is now, people, especially the elderly, do not feel safe walking the pavements, especially after dark.
While this is true also in many other parts of the city, it has become the stated aim of the City Council, especially in defence of the destruction of the trees and the narrowing of the roadway, to make the area attractive to pedestrians. No matter how many decorative improvements are performed on O'Connell Street, they are the equivalent of sweeping dirt under the carpet unless the street is policed and made safe from muggers and vandals .
How long will it take before the "Spike" is covered with graffiti? How long before the "new" trees planned are broken? How long before the "plaza" near the GPO is taken over by undesirables? Unless the council and politicians face the fact that Dubliners do not feel safe on many of the streets of their city and address this immediately, no number of improvements will entice people back into what was once a wide, graceful street and a treasure of the capital.
Dublin City Council needs to give the city back to the hard-working, law-abiding citizens who live, work and visit there. - Yours, etc.,
JANE BEHAN, Meadowbrook Lawn, Dublin 13.
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Madam, - With regard to recent correspondence and the article by Kathy Sheridan in the Weekend Review of November 9th, I have photographs which I took from the top of the Nelson Pillar in 1947. I can confirm, therefore, that at that time there was a line of mature trees stretching the full length of Upper O'Connell Street - but south of the pillar, all the way to D'Olier Street, there is not a single tree of any description to be seen. - Yours, etc.,
IAN H. BATH, Beauparc Downs, Monkstown, Co Dublin.