Sir, - I find it ironic that, as A Christmas Carol opens at the Gate Theatre, there seem to be more children than ever begging on the streets of Dublin. Even more disturbing are the increasing number of women with young babies sitting forlornly on church steps, or huddled in doorways near the shopping malls.
"Don't give them anything as it only encourages them," we are told, but how do you walk past a blank-faced young woman breastfeeding a baby, or a nine-year-old urchin trying to scrape a tune out of a guitar in order to please the affluent tourists swarming through Grafton Street?
Of course we have no way of knowing whether they are genuinely distressed and deprived, or simply on the make. Certainly they must have been desperate to brave the bitter weather last weekend; but as we don't have the help of Dickens's spectres to show us what is what, how can we be sure we are doing the right thing by just walking by? - Yours, etc.,
Anita E. Dye, Tangmere, Chichester, West Sussex, England.