YOU report (August 15) that the SIMI is campaigning to extend scrappage subsidies to protect the car industry.

MYLES Duffy is right (‘Vintners pathetic attempt to discredit new drink-driving limit’, Letters, July 12).

A FORMIDABLE list of Kerry luminaries wrote to you (Letters, June 21) claiming eagles have not been poisoned deliberately there.

ALAN Nolan of the SIMI says (Letters, June 21) that “as a result of scrappage, 17,500 more cars have been sold this year delivering an additional €70m in badly needed extra revenue to the exchequer”.

ACCORDING to figures from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), the scrappage scheme has cost the exchequer €15 million in lost revenue.

THE news that China’s oil consumption rose by 28% last year and the admission by the International Energy Authority (IEA) that the world’s oil reserves are being depleted at 6.2% a year should be a wake-up call.

IN her letter (March 9), Marian O’Mullane says her daughter had to pay Ryanair €470 for travelling with 10kg excess baggage.

YOU report (February 16) that a proposed wind farm “could produce enough energy to power 59,000 homes”.

IT is misleading for Michael O’Leary to claim Ryanair will impose a €100 “fine” on passengers who have not printed their boarding passes (November 9).

PROSECUTING motorists for putting For Sale signs on their cars (November 11) is not just stupid — it’s malicious and petty-minded.

IN his letter headlined ‘Reducing legal drink limit will save countless lives’ (August 20), Dr Declan Bedford, replying to my criticism of his ‘research’ (August 18) is changing his tune.

THE incessant deluge in west Cork led me to do a rough calculation of the amount of potential energy delivered to Ireland by rainfall.

SO Prof Jack Pridham says “any attempt to replace conventional food with organic requires careful investigation” (Letters, June 23).

REGARDING your leader ‘Soaring price of oil — The real cost of energy dependence’ (May 31), media pundits and politicians have been giving a variety of political explanations, reluctant to accept that the underlying cause is simply that of supply being unable to meet demand, nor do they understand the technical difficulties of increasing oil production.

YOU quote Prof Frank Convery (April 14) as saying ‘water is fast becoming the new oil’. This is nonsense. Oil is fossilised remains that were produced over millions of years; once used it cannot be replaced.

BY banning incandescent (tungsten) lamps, the Government wants to be seen to be doing something to tackle global warming and peak oil. However, as usual, what they do is either ineffective or counterproductive and nothing more than an empty gesture to avoid effective action.

YOUR leader (November 19) makes the case for “encouraging biofuels”.

YOU report Brian Farrell of the Road Safety Authority (August 3) as saying that “in terms of serious injuries, the figures show that travelling as a passenger in a car is one of the most dangerous things a child can do on any given day”.

IN A report headlined ‘Scaremongering stars show no sense about science’ (Irish Examiner, January 4), an organisation called Sense About Science stated celebrities who front public campaigns should check their facts first to avoid making claims that have no scientific basis.

THE Government’s Transport 21 plan should be given credit for reversing the destruction of the railways, but you publish comments from Prof Seán Barrett’s ERSI paper unjustifiably attacking investment in rail (Irish Examiner, December 21).

YOU report that “a dramatic downturn in road deaths since the introduction of mandatory alcohol testing has resulted in the saving of 41 Irish lives” (Irish Examiner, December 9).

Government incompetence beggars belief. Why should people have to wait six months to take a driving test? It is simply a matter of employing more driving examiners; it cannot be difficult to recruit and train instructors. These delays have been ongoing for years.

YOU reported that nearly €1.5bn is to be invested in the national roads development programme” (Irish Examiner, November 20).

THE way to prevent traffic rat-running to avoid paying tolls at the Watergrasshill bypass is to adopt the means used by most other countries.

YOU publicised demands from the road lobby that in response to higher oil prices the Government should bail them out by cutting fuel taxes (Irish Examiner, August 9).

FOLLOWING sustained attack by the media on ‘junk food’ as the root cause of obesity, proposals are afoot to restrict the advertising of it on TV, or even to introduce a junk food tax.

FINE Gael reportedly believe that bad roads rather than bad driving habits are responsible for accidents, saying that according to ‘European research’, one-third of fatal accidents are caused by poor surface.

YOUR editorial (Irish Examiner, May 30) endorsed the idea that global warming can be solved by preaching to people to make sacrifices.

YOUR report headlined ‘75% of taxi drivers have high blood pressure’ uses statistics in a meaningless way (Irish Examiner, May 12).

IN early March, a so-called Coastal Clean-Up Project invited people, via posters, in Bantry, Glengarriff and Durrus to collect rubbish from our beaches.

YOUR report of the go-ahead for the €300m Cashel/Mitchelstown road project (Irish Examiner, January 4) is accompanied by the usual claim of “attracting companies to locate in the county,” although this is unsubstantiated by any evidence.

YOU reported the opening of the first outlet in Ireland to sell biodiesel made from rapeseed oil (Irish Examiner, November 17).