Madam, - Thanks to Frank McDonald (Property, March 8th), we know who to blame for the design of the new office building on Dame Street, but who is to blame for the anti-tank traps, or "granite-topped seats", between it and City Hall?
Tanks can be a nuisance in city centres and should be deterred at all costs, but is it necessary to regard skateboarders as a similar threat to civil order and deter them by placing steel knobs on the seat edges on these features? Why is it deemed essential to deprive the exclusively urban sport of skateboarding of its environment by building the very features that its athletes strive upon, and then adding a device to make them redundant?
In European capitals such as Brussels, similar spaces have been used as small skateboard parks. In Providence, Rhode Island, the skateboard park in the city centre is a focal point for town activities.
Sport and social interaction needs to be promoted among youth, and there are enough consultants' reports written in support of this idea to build a papier-maché skateboard park out of them. Those who have a negative stereotype of skateboarders should realise that the agility and balance that the sport requires would be immediately lost by the imbibbing of alchohol or drugs.
If we insist on providing a city without grass, we should at least have the sense to provide some concrete to play on. - Yours, etc,
NIALL McMANUS, Maudlin Street, Kilkenny.