Madam, - With regard to recent letters on coughing in the Concert Hall, this is not the first time you have published correspondence on the subject. (I seem to recall one along the same lines from Ursula Hough Gormley, if I am not greatly mistaken).
As someone who was formerly a Friend of the (then) Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, I have not been in the NCH for years, precisely because of my fear of coughing and drawing down the wrath of other concert-goers on my head. Likewise, my late sister - a former music teacher - also gave up attending the hall after an embarrassing telling-off by an irate old lady who should have known better.
A few years ago I read in Classic FM music magazine a letter from a medical doctor in Canada on this very subject. He pointed out that certain medications (e.g. some blood pressure tablets) can actually cause a ticklish cough which it is impossible to suppress. As a sufferer from hypertension myself, I know all about this.
It is my experience, as well, that in certain large department stores in Dublin (and some not so large) I find myself coughing uncontrollably. This, I have been told by staff, has everything to do with the air-conditioning (somehow circulating dust in the atmosphere). Has the NCH got air-conditioning - I would be surprised if it has not - and, if so, could this be to some extent the culprit?
Finally - as this clearly needs to be spelled out - concert-goers do not cough deliberately, or for fun, or just to annoy others. Most people, I imagine, would be deeply embarrassed to be coughing or throat-clearing in such a place, and try desperately to refrain from so doing. Little packets of lozenges, as suggested by Elizabeth Hood (February 25th) might do the trick for some people - but I am not sure that they are the best, or even the only, solution to the problem. - Yours, etc,
Dr BRENDA O'HANRAHAN, Park Lane, Sandymount, Dublin 4.