Madam, - Some weeks ago, the Minister for the Environment attended the Sandymount and Merrion Residents' Association. To give him his due, he is a faithful attender and supporter of local issues. It is what won him many votes at the last election, though most of us who supported him did not realise that a vote for Gormley was as good as a vote for Fianna Fáil. We may not be so naive next time. Clad in his dress suit, with his bicycle helmet at his side, the Minister made a spirited defence of his difficult situation, whereby his well-known opposition to an incinerator on the Poolbeg peninsula may no longer be spoken of openly, indeed would be illegal to invoke.
But, he assured us, we all knew his thinking, and could be assured that every legitimate tactic would be employed to ensure that such a thing would never happen. He was received with sympathy, hope, and some scepticism. Lucky for him that meeting was when it was, for had it been held in the days after both An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency had given their full permission for the project to go ahead, not even his bicycle helmet could have saved Mr Gormley from the wrath of the disappointed citizenry of coastal Dublin.
Where, in any of this, is there a vestige of democracy? Hundreds of thousands of Dubliners have said No to an incinerator on Poolbeg. An oral hearing was given exhaustive and incontrovertible reasons for scrapping it. Every single local TD and councillor opposes it. An EU Directive rules against it. The Minister of the very Government department charged with protecting our environment opposes it. Yet a city manager and some planning officials can ignore all this and push it through.
What in the name of all that is rational are we doing when we elect a Government which is supposed to respond to the wishes of its citizens? Instead, we have city councillors who are powerless, TDs who are toothless, and a Minister who is helpless. Lord save us all. - Yours, etc,
RODNEY DEVITT, Tritonville Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4.