How many of us really appreciate these great, thundering highways, motorways or autobahns that have spread over the country? Maybe lorry drivers; but then you often find them sneaking away from the heavy traffic and dodging along small, twisting roads that were not built to carry such titanic monsters. And, if speed be the main cause of death on our roads, as we are frequently told, do not these super-highways give us the urge to put the foot down on the accelerator? Autobahn habits of swerving from lane to lane, frequent overtaking, carried over into our old road system, could be one of the main dangers.
And do tourists come to Ireland to whizz from one place to the other? We know how Americans are often disgusted (or pretend to be) to find that the Ireland they heard about from their grandfathers - the Ireland of the ubiquitous thatched cottages and half-doors - now exists mainly in "visitor centres" or "interpretative centres."
In general, the picture of Ireland spread by our tourist people is surely one of the relatively unspoiled character of our countryside. The Celtic Tiger doesn't bring tourists, but the views of cliffs and wild Atlantic waves or of peaceful fishing lakes and purple, bare mountains may do. One recent tourist board advertisement in a German newspaper urged the virtues of our uncrowded beaches in this off-season - strands on which no one goes swimming now . . . picturesque, empty of people.
There are two dangers here. We don't want to stay stuck with phoney Ould Ireland ideas, nor should we look for the new Tiger in everything. Is there too much bragging about our economic strength, when the lopsidedness of wealth distribution, and other factors, make city streets dangerous? There was a time when latenight newspapermen would walk home to any quarter of the city and hardly see a soul at, say 2 or 3 a.m., and certainly not be attacked if they did. One old reporter remembers a couple which used to appear in the early hours in Grafton Street, and they just went from window to window looking in awe. They obviously lived nearby; one of them was so disabled that he could walk only with great difficulty, and with the help of his companion, and obviously could not have withstood even a normal day's crush of pedestrians.
Finally, nothing stated about the virtues of our smaller roads can be taken as meaning that pot-holes should be tolerated.