Madam, - Reg McCabe's letter of March 17th complaining about one-sidedness in the Letters page debate on the M3 motorway is revealing. Those who oppose driving this motorway through a dense archaeological and historic landscape simply have the better side of the argument.
The support for the plan in opinion polls conducted by business interests presumably comes from local people, who will tend to welcome anything that makes life more convenient for them. This, the only rational reason (and, in its own terms, a good one) for supporting the chosen motorway route, is hardly likely to play well on the Letters page.
While it would be inaccurate to suggest that the M3 is being routed through the Hill of Tara itself, it is clearly true that it will slash through the integral landscape of the hill, and that by night the whole area will be as bright as the Korean Demilitarised Zone.
Rather than supporting the plan, commuters sitting in traffic jams on the existing roads might well consider what kind of public authorities could have allowed rampant unplanned development to bring about such congestion in the first place and why they now can think only of driving a straight road through Ireland's Valley of the Kings. - Yours, etc.,
HUGO BRADY BROWN,
Stratford on Slaney,
Co Wicklow.