Madam, - How sad that the owners of Fibber Magees in Galway have chosen to flout the law by encouraging customers to smoke on their premises. If I chose to set up a stall selling cheap beer on the footpath outside their pub, I am sure they would be the first to complain, and to demand that gardaí take me away and prosecute me for flouting the law.
All businesses face adverse trading conditions at some stage of their lives, but in this case, Messrs Levanzin and Lawless even have a level playing field - all publicans in Ireland face the same challenge. But like George Bush, they seem to think they have a right to flout the law in search of profit.
How sad that, having known months in advance the date the smoking ban would come into effect, they had not had the imagination to think of ways of encouraging their customers to stay.
A good businessman is one who plans ahead, and when he sees conditions are set to change, meets the challenge and changes with them, rather than whinging about it.
Shame on Mr Levanzin and Mr Lawless, and on anyone who supports them in their law-breaking. - Yours, etc.,
RACHEL CAVE, Knocknacarra, Galway.
Madam, - I hear rebellious publicans and customers saying that a smoke and a cigarette are part of our Irish tradition and should be allowed.
Pigs in the kitchen, hens in the parlour and going to school barefoot were also part of our heritage and tradition. Let us advance, but not backwards. - Yours, etc.,
MICK O'GORMAN, Delhurst Avenue, Dublin 15.
Madam, - In considering the rebellion at Fibber Magees against the smoking ban, let us be clear about Micheál Martin's motive for refusing any reasonable compromise.
No other state in the EU has imposed such draconian, vicious measures: only by insisting on the most extreme stance imaginable in Ireland has this Minister been able to claim a European first. The greater the prominence for the one issue, the more the failure to deliver a decent health service for this country's people might be overlooked, the more his personal political ambitions might be furthered.
Why else would he not publicise the actual risk figure for passive smoking - about 0.06 per cent - so tiny that unbiased medical experts dispute its significance? Any doctor will tell him he is confusing relative risk with absolute risk in publishing alarmist propaganda. By preying on an innate sense of guilt, the Minister has hoodwinked the public into destroying Ireland's social fabric: inclusiveness, compromise, craic, welcome to all.
Such tyranny must be exposed. - Yours, etc.,
HARRY DAVIES, Radharc na Rún, An Spidéal, Co na Gaillimhe.
Madam, - Perhaps the clients of Fibber Magees will show the same respect for the law as the bar owners by refusing to pay for their pints? - Yours, etc.,
RICHARD BANNISTER, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2.