Madam, - Patrick D. Doyle (September 2) seems to be suffering from the fallacy of the undistributed middle. Or is he just being paranoid?
Expropriation, nationalisation, compulsory purchase - whichever he will sleep the more soundly with - has not been an instrument confined to international villains. Charles de Gaulle, Harry S. Truman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Felipe Gonzalez, to name but a few, have all dabbled in a judicious spot of it.
It seems inevitable, with the population set to increase by a million people by 2020 and no sign of any alternative hospital infrastructure coming on-stream, that the State will have to take some such action eventually, like it or not. If some derisory compensation proved necessary, the State could drive a really hard bargain - after all, the boys will have had their tax breaks already.
It will hurt only a little bit. Honestly. - Yours, etc,
Dr GERRY BURKE,
Riverside Clinic,
Steamboat Quay,
Limerick.