Infrastructural Ireland is blind to its own best interests and may end up losing its way

I WELL understand the pressing need for an improvement in our transport system.

As yet there seems little sign of the radical rethink that will be required if we are to establish an efficient, integrated system in which air, rail, sea, and road all play their proper part to enhance the quality of our daily lives.

But I cannot believe that a solution to these problems necessitates a destruction of our priceless Irish heritage. There is so much evidence of dereliction in O’Connell Street and Parnell Square in Dublin as to make me (an Englishman) despair of the indifference to our public wellbeing. Who can doubt that the place for The Abbey, Ireland’s national theatre, is in the capital’s main street?

Only politicians, financiers, and property developers, it would seem, and these are the people who nowadays exercise power on our behalf.

The future of Tara, in particular, is surely a question of profound concern for all those with a true love of Ireland. Now is the time — as an election draws near — for us to ask politicians whether a motorway or the car is worth the price of Ireland’s ancient heritage. The grandeur of Trinity College is daily polluted by cars, vans, and lorries even as we seek to earn money by advertising visits to the Book of Kells. The study of medieval Ireland is under threat in our leading universities. If we lose our sense of Ireland as the land of saints and scholars, then Ireland will in fact cease to exist. So much for all our wars and animosities. The time has surely come for a constructive and creative kind of Irish nationalism.

Dr Gerald Morgan

Trinity College

Dublin 2