Sir, - More than 30 years ago the Maritime Institute of Ireland, through its sea safety committee, carried out over many months a campaign urging the establishment here of a national coast guard, the compulsory wearing of life-jackets by leisure sailors and the need for certificates of competence to be held by users of various types of leisure craft. Your paper gave much publicity to this campaign, for which thanks were duly expressed.
This is not the only sphere of human activity in and around our country in which governments and the bureaucracy have taken decades to see the obvious and then expected fanfares of praise when, far too late, they have woken up to the obvious in this alleged democracy. - Yours, etc.,
John De Courcy, Ireland, Grosvenor Terrace, Dalkey, Co Dublin.