Madam, - Dick Roche berates An Taisce as "unelected" and "unanswerable" (The Irish Times, March 15th). Mr Roche should be reminded that this State has depended heavily on unelected voluntary groups in the past and continues to do so.
Moreover, experience shows that electability is not a measure of reliability or trustworthiness. There is in fact a democratic and moral responsibility on elected representatives to support voluntary initiative and in doing so they are actually supporting democracy.
Too often, however, politicians oppose and undermine, at both local and national level, any initiatives which are not directly under party control. There are times when a principled stand has to be taken in the interest of community or environment and the guiding consideration cannot just be political popularity.
To take an example from Mr Roche's neighbouring Co Kildare, out of 2,500 housing units being built annually, 1,000 - 40 per cent - are in the rural category. But the great majority of these are urban-generated.
Nobody, including An Taisce, has any problem with rural people housing themselves in accordance with the rules. Only about 1 per cent of this 1,000 are appealed annually. Of a mere nine cases appealed in one recent year all contravened the liberal policy of the county plan, which favours rural families housing themselves on family land. And in all cases the manager had over-ruled the planner.
The facts should speak for themselves and they do not have to be served up with a liberal helping of emotional mumbo-jumbo. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr TONY McEVOY, Loughbollard, Clane, Co Kildare.