Sir, - Now that the presidential election is over, would you have space for a question that a great many individuals are asking privately and which one other Irish newspaper recently raised without obtaining a reply?
For four years the city of Lisbon has been preparing along its splendid waterfront space for the last great international exhibition of this century: Expo '98, dedicated to the oceans, navigation across which was pioneered by the Portuguese in the 15th century. Every one of our EU partners is participating. Why are we not?
Do those in authority here not yet understand the importance to mankind of the oceans which cover 71 per cent of our globe? Did they not read the article published on October 16th in The Irish Times emphasising this country's potential for and need of rapid development in oceanic research?
Ignoring this great initiative by our Portuguese partners in the EU is an unwarranted snub to a country with which we have had extremely close relations in the past and still do much trade. Portugal, like Ireland, is a small nation with a big and formerly aggressive neighbour with a vigorous and deeply penetrative culture. When Portugal was opening up the ocean to European mariners her famous Prince Henry "the Navigator", inspirer of these voyages, thought 15th-century Ireland important enough to keep a permanent agent in Galway. The annals of the Portuguese navy are illuminated by the names of many mariners of Irish birth or descent who served in it, and a Portuguese poet who kept vividly alive in our day the unparalleled tradition of great Portuguese poetry was the late Alexander O'Neill.
What sort of partners will the Portuguese judge us to be in the task of creating a peaceful and prosperous Europe in the next century if we, alone, turn our backs on their present endeavours? - Yours, etc.,
(Member of the Academia de Acarinha, Lisbon), Dalkey, Co Dublin.