JOHN de COURCY
Madam, - Reading the story in your paper of the demise of one of the most remarkable firms ever engaged in the vital trade of shipbuilding, I was vividly reminded of a period more than 70 years ago when I was an insignificant crew member on a continental cargo ship off South America.
At each port, when I went ashore, I was asked where I came from. On almost every occasion the reply to my "Ireland" was "Harland and Wolff", and a catalogue of distinguished ships built there which had called or were owned at the local port.
It was easy in those days to accept the great Belfast yard as a symbol of my country and to rejoice in a valuable Irish product universally known. What a disgrace that once invaluable industrial producers sink to the level of "land developers", of which Ireland has already too many.
It was a disgrace, when our long warned but unimpressed government was forced by the absence of available shipping to set up our own Irish Shipping Company, that after the war, when new ships were needed, it did not order them in Ireland at Belfast. Such a doubly profitable cross-border business could have saved Irish Shipping and done much to develop relations between Dublin and Belfast.
It is surely time for the Government of this island nation (that once built ships for half the world and bred seamen in all its many ports) to take steps to restore Ireland's maritime economy and stop leaving the seas to other continents. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN de COURCY IRELAND, Grosvenor Terrace, Dalkey, Co Dublin.