JUSTIN O' FLAHERTY,
Sir, - Enda Connellan, chief executive of Dublin Port, commented with pride recently on the arrival of the luxury liner The Brilliance Of The Seas in Dublin Port recently.
He would have been better employed asking the tourists on this vessel about their initial impression of our capital city.
Comparisons with Nice or Cannes don't bear thinking about.What they saw was a run-down and ugly introduction to our capital city: containers stacked five high covering a vast tract of land, the ugly oil farm, derelict warehousing, many, many cranes and vast stretches of waste land. Core port activities, indeed.
This is the same port that is applying yet again to fill in 52 acres of our beautiful bay. No doubt this outrageous proposal will require the deployment of even more containers, cranes, etc.
How much longer will the people of Dublin have to tolerate the flippant attitude of Dublin Port and when will Bord Fáilte come to its senses and have an input into how the port looks. It should realise that first impressions are lasting.
Let us now insist that the heavy duty and bulk trade be moved out of Dublin, and have the oil piped to a site near one of the motorways. Then, maybe, the land that the port acquired for nothing over the past 30 years might finally be put to some efficient use. - Yours, etc.,
JUSTIN O' FLAHERTY, Clontarf Road, Dublin 3.