Sir, - I lived and worked in Limerick in the 1950s, spending a decade there in the public service. During that time I met the finest people I have ever known - from all strata of Limerick's life - and have warmest memories of our stay there. Forty years later we are regular visitors to the Limerick Ryan Hotel, which, in our opinion, has the finest staff and services, the most exquisitively prepared and presented food it has ever been our good fortune to taste and consume.
As septuagenarians we find night-time Limerick uncomfortable. However, this limitation applies to all our urban centres, mainly due to parents shelving their own duties and responsibilities. Commerce and the civic authorities have also contributed to the unsafe factors in our streets with junk-food outlets, juke-boxes and one-armed bandits.
As former founder secretary of the Dublin City Centre Business Association I have long advocated the closing of these outlets and the abolition of the late night-drinking extensions in the city centre. Principally I have advocated the ending of all public transport to and from the centre of Dublin at 10 p.m. The publican lobby does not agree, which is a social attitude I find indefensible. But then how many publicans are Dubliners or of Dublin origin?
It is for the people of Limerick to adopt their own remedial measures, while my wife and I will continue to visit and enjoy a Limerick that will always be special to us. Even allowing for literary inexactitudes for the purpose of sales stimulation, I still find Angela's Ashes a travesty. - Yours, etc., Michael Mac Coisdealbh,
Upper Kilmacud Road, Dublin 14.