Madam, - As a 22-year-old student who has lived all his life in Rathfarnham, Dublin, I hope one day to be able to live in a home of my own in this area. I contribute to the community in many ways - through my studies and my membership of the local football team, for example.
Under Mr Martin Cullen's plans, therefore, would I be able to apply for permission to build a house near my parents - in their back garden, perhaps, or the green space opposite, or on one of the many golf courses in the locality? I would dearly love to build a house in the picturesque environs of either Bushy or Marley parks; and who could object - sure haven't I lived here all my life and don't I contribute to the community?
But I suspect that only the good country folk are being afforded the right to build tasteless structures wherever they see fit. Surely this is discrimination. It is unfair that someone else should be allowed to build in a special area of conservation while I am prevented from building my own bungalow next to Pearse's. I hope that I will be able to afford your fine paper in the future when I have started paying for my semi-D in the new commuter town of Ballyragget. - Yours, etc.,
NIALL Ó H-ÉALAITHE, Bóthar Mhuire, Rathfearnáin, Baile Átha Cliath 14.
Madam, - In relation to the damage which may be caused to our tourism industry by one-off housing, John Waters asks which is more important: "the citizen's right to a decent life, or the outsider's desire to come and gawp at a kitschified countryside?"
Mr Waters - and, judging by his pronouncements, the Minister for the Environment - seem to think this is the choice Irish people now face: either we deface our countryside with more one-off houses or we don't build any more homes in rural areas.
Mr Waters will no doubt accuse me of being a snob when I suggest that the Achill Island and its environs, for example, have been spoiled by a litter of one-off houses. I would not deny the right of anyone to build and live in that area (though an argument could be made against summer homes laying empty for more that three-quarters of the year), but the question Mr Waters fails to address, and that Mr Cullen has chosen to ignore, is: how could those people have been accommodated without spoiling the landscape?
It seems that many of us Irish (including, ironically, the Minister for the Environment) do not place great importance on our physical landscape. - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN O'SHEA, Westfields, North Circular Road, Limerick.