Madam, - Like Ed O'Neill (February 20th) I deplore the absence of a proper transport museum and I pay tribute to all those private preservationists who have tried, and still try, to "nurture our nation's transport gems", despite fearsome financial obstacles. The loss of the (privately operated) Killarney Transport Museum in recent times has been just one more sore calamity piled on top of previous reverses.
Our country has had a fascinating involvement with transport of all kinds - road vehicles, aircraft (military and civil), canals, railways and ships, to name only the principal categories - yet hardly any of this industrial archaeology and social history receives any support from central or local government.
The shining exception is the Flying Boat Museum at Foynes, which shows what can be done when resources and enthusiasm are married. I fully subscribe to the oft-quoted dictum of the Rudyard Kipling: "Transportation is civilisation."
Nowadays, transport museums are considered routine tourist and educational resources in most modern countries (even Latvia has one). Yet no State-funded transport museum, on a par with the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, exists south of the Border. Were there such a museum, I would be happy to provide 11 interesting motor-cars dating from 1913 to 1938 on permanent or temporary loan, and I am but one enthusiast out of many. - Yours, etc,
FINBARR FRANK CORRY, Beech Park Drive, Foxrock, Dublin 18.