The Luas light-rail proposal certainly makes for contentious argument. Put any two people together and it seems you can have a debate that winds up adding more heat than light to the issue. Be that as it may, the recent article by Dr Garret FitzGerald and subsequent reply by Frank McDonald cannot go unchallenged by the AA. Frank McDonald feels that Luas must be on-street because this is the only way to stop people from using their cars. His criteria seem less focused on the need to improve transport in general than the "need" to stop transport by car.

Luas on-street will physically block cars, and this appears reason enough to spend £220 million building it. Merely to look at an underground option is wrong.

We do not agree, nor do the motoring public. The AA researched the views of its membership in Dublin recently and that report showed that 66 per cent of motorists favour an underground solution for Luas in the city centre. This is not because they wish to damage the environment but because they can see that an underground will make the whole of the transport system, collectively, more efficient.

We will now at least have to examine an underground seriously, and for this the Minister, Ms O'Rourke, is to be commended. Luas proponents cannot simply declare unmandated ideological opposition to underground and end the debate there. I am unaware of the "intensive pressure from the car lobby" to which Frank McDonald attributes this decision, but as a Dubliner I am grateful for it.

Dr FitzGerald took pains to distance himself from the car lobby; Frank McDonald conceded that the good doctor was not so wicked as that, merely misguided. More gauche than sinister, if you like.

The AA is part of the "car lobby" and proud of it. The car lobby, despite the tone of many references to it, is not some sort of cabal of ruthless multinationals feeding the junkie-like habits of destructive drivers. We do not lobby for the cars but for the people sitting in them - 331,000 of them in Dublin. These are ordinary people with real lives and real needs. The cars they drive are not luxuries, used wilfully to the detriment of the city. It is deeply offensive to hear Frank McDonald refer to "private chariots" and equating their use to guzzling champagne. Pre-school children being dropped to child-minders, staff of hospitals and schools, workers in the shops that provide milk for Frank's tea: these are the villains of his piece.

Both Frank McDonald and Dr FitzGerald describe the car lobby as very powerful. It is not powerful enough, in my view. If it were, motorists would perhaps pay less than the £1.7 billion currently collected in taxation.

Both men commend the notion of road pricing as a mechanism to charge drivers for the "full social cost of their activities"; neither acknowledges the full social benefits of car ownership and the freedom of movement that it provides. People use cars because they need the mobility that they provide. The motorcar is not public transport but it is the most efficient and effective way that we have of transporting the public. To suggest that parents with small kids in Lucan, or working mothers in Stillorgan, or butchers, bakers and candlestick makers in all parts of the city should be castigated for car use is wrong. The AA has said before that Dublin has fewer cars than almost any other European city of comparable size. Our problems are not caused by car use but by inefficient public transport and a lack of resources for traffic management.

The cost of parking has been increased in the city centre and on-street parking has been removed. But what has been done about the hopeless inefficiency to be seen in the bus service? Surely Frank McDonald sees the parked and empty buses that line Fleet Street and College Green. Is this the best use of road space? Every Dubliner has watched badly maintained buses and lorries vomiting black oily clouds into the air, yet it is the efficient, low emission, catalyser-fitted car that gets blamed.

It is easy to find criticism of commuting cars with only one passenger, yet how often do we see empty buses following full ones along a route into the city?

That same AA survey to which I referred showed that almost 72 per cent of motorists felt that traffic flow in Dublin was poorly managed. This cannot be blamed on the drivers alone.

WE know what can be done because for a month last Christmas Dublin got its act together. Operation Freeflow put extra gardai on the streets and Dublin Corporation greatly increased its efforts to keep the streets clear of cones, skips and obstacles. Drivers could see it working, and civic obedience broke out on the streets. Clearways and bus lanes were respected, transgressors dealt with quickly.

The benefits were immediate and enormous. The cost, in modern terms, was trivial. It is estimated that the bill came to approximately £800,000. Most of that was in overtime payments for the 100 extra gardai required. It could be done year round for £8 million. Yet Freeflow has been allowed to drop flat for want of adequate resources.

Luas is going to cost us £220 million. It is the AA's belief that before the first ecu of that money is spent all of the options, including underground, should be properly assessed and understood.

Thank you, Mary O'Rourke.