Madam, - Walking through Dublin city after the glorious St Patrick's Day parade was a dangerous experience.
Alcohol fuelled-Irish youths threatening each other, running from gardaí, intimidating families, seemed to dominate the city. Angry parents like myself were being insulted and provoked. Beer cans were everywhere. The gardaí were totally outnumbered. And this was only three o'clock in the afternoon.
Will it take a few more deaths like that at Anabel's before we seriously confront the alcohol industry? - Yours, etc.,
NIALL COLEMAN, Corrig Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Irish politicians are dotted around the globe on our national day selling the leprechaun image of Ireland and handing out crystal bowls filled with giant clumps of shamrock.
At home the day in towns and cities begins with a street parade, controlled by our police force. Then the real business of the day begins: to get drunk out of one's mind and go back on the streets to vomit, to urinate, to fight, to have outdoor sex, to abuse the innocent and to perform other anti-social activities, with hardly a policeman in sight.
Later the emergency services cart people to the nearest hospital to have injuries repaired, stomachs pumped, etc. Then the jets carrying the Irish politicians arrive home when the streets are cleaned, the hospitals are cleared and the drunkards have recovered from this alcohol-induced mayhem.
If we cannot behave as human beings is it now time to call a halt to this annual display of drunkenness? We can all live without it. - Yours, etc.,
CLAIRE KENNEDY, Bowling Green, Galway.
Madam, - I note that you have quoted once again the organisers' estimate of 500,000 people attending the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. It would be interesting to know how they arrived at this figure.
Where I was standing at Christ Church, a popular location, the crowd was about six deep on both sides. At this rate the total on the entire one-and-a-half mile route would be 48,000. To accommodate the organisers' estimate would require a route 16 miles long!
"Only" 250,000 people turned up for Martin Luther King's civil rights march in Washington D.C. on August 28th, 1963, one of the greatest gatherings in US history. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL COLLINS, Dangan Avenue, Kimmage Road West, Dublin 12.