Sir, - I have just experienced the welcome afforded to those visitors who are foot passengers on the 2.10 a.m. ferry from Holyhead on Sunday mornings.
Such visitors arrive at Dun Laoghaire at 6.06 am to find no information on onward travel. We made our way to the DART station where, again, there appeared to be no information or timetable. What we did find was a huge disgusting heap of rubbish under the steps to the north-bound platform - surely a health or fire hazard. A German student asked me if all of Ireland was so dirty.
A passer-by told us that the first bus to Dublin would leave at 8 a.m. and the first train at 9 a.m.: neither of much use to anyone wanting the 8.30 train from Hueston to Tralee, with connections to Limerick and Cork. So we took taxis. My taxi driver dumped his passengers about 300 yards from the station entrance and sat with his engine running while we heaved our cases from the boot, trying not to inhale the exhaust fumes.
Hueston was padlocked. We waited, standing, for about 20 minutes while more taxis arrived from Dun Laoghaire, and were eventually let in at about 7.30 a.m. to find no waiting room and no refreshments. The lavatories appeared to be padlocked. The hard wooden benches were too few for the numbers, so when the cafe stirred to life at about 8.15 a.m., several dozen potential customers were in the relative comfort of the train.
Most of my companions were foreign students. But today's back-packers are tomorrow's executives, and I wonder, when they have serious money to spend on holidays, if they will remember their first morning in Ireland and decide to spend their money somewhere else. - Yours, etc.,
Mrs F.P. Grove-Annesley,
Castletownroche, Co Cork.