ANTHONY FALKINER,
A chara, - Is it surprising that there should be considerable opposition to the rebuilding of the "Victoria Fountain" commemorating Queen Victoria in Dún Laoghaire harbour at a cost of €400,000? Think of the thousands of Irish men, women and children who starved to death because of the failure of the potato crop while immense amounts of other foods were shipped through Irish ports to Britain when Ireland was under British rule and Victoria was the monarch.
In 2002, in what is supposed to be a modern European republic, why are we rebuilding memorials to our past colonial masters? If the sole motivation for this fountain's reappearance is architectural and aesthetic, why not rename it the "Emigrants' Fountain"? Surely a more fitting title when one considers the many thousands who left Ireland through Dún Laoghaire never to return. - Is mise,
ANTHONY FALKINER, Ridge Hill, Ballybrack, Co Dublin.