Madam, - In 1988, Prof Robert Cunningham of the Soil Science Department at Cornell University in the US spent six months on sabbatical leave at Trinity College, Dublin. He contacted me at Oak Park Research Centre with a view to visiting Carlow.
He arrived some weeks later and I had the pleasure of showing him around Oak Park and travelling throughout the county to view the landscape, geography and soils of the county as well as Carlow's unique artefacts in granite stone.
In the course of an evening meal, I asked him: what was his impression of Ireland? Without hesitation, he replied: "It's a totally lawless country; nobody seems to have any regard for the law". He went on to enquire: "What does your police force do?"
Nothing seems to have changed, except for the worse. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CONRY, Avila, Chapelstown, Carlow.