Sir, - Deaglan de Breadun (June 15th) reports that Margaret Thatcher was astonished by the quality of the roads in Northern Ireland. By Jingo, what else did she expect after the Chancellor of the Exchequer spent all that money? Cart-tracks? Jaunting cars? Orangemen on donkeys?
Had she been driven from, say, Derry or Limerick to Dublin she would have been even more astonished by the quality of the roads in the Republic. In fact, I am sure she would have been thrilled by their variegated nature - wide-open stretches suddenly narrowing to boreens, paving with ripples like the sands of the sea, bottomless potholes, "temporary traffic-lights" on aeons old road-works, mysterious road-signs obscured by mud and the inevitable excitement of sitting in the main-street of some one-horse town watching a German juggernaut trying to get around the `98 memorial.
After a trip like that, the Iron Lady would have understood why the Irish have, inscribed on their stout little hearts, the quotation: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." - Yours, etc. Eamon Sweeney,
South Hill, Dublin 6.