Sir, - I am just coming to the end of the task of updating the map of the Burren that I published over 20 years ago. I have had to record many changes for better and worse. But my pen keeps returning to one particular dot I have added to the map, beside the old Crag Road in Gortlecka near Mullaghmore. What am I to write here? It marks the site of the proposed visitor centre of the Burren National Park. Clare County Council has, after many years of controversy, refused planning permission for it. Now the Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands has to choose: either she goes to An Bord Pleanala, which means yet another round in this never-ending struggle, or she takes the opportunity of ending the matter gracefully.
I would dearly love my new map to be part of a celebration of the return of peace and good feeling to a community that has been soured and divided by this needless row. I appeal to the Minister finally to abandon the environmentally intrusive Gortlecka scheme and undo the hurt to the Burren it has caused by funding interpretative centres in nearby villages. - Yours, etc., Tim Robinson,
Roundstone, Co Galway.