Madam, - As a tour guide, I frequently take groups of foreigners to the Hill of Tara. After informing them of the importance of the site, the fact that it was the political centre of Ireland for a thousand years, the sacred and legendary centre of many stories, and still important in modern times as a focal point of national identity, I then have to inform them that there are no public toilets available.
The situation over the past several years was bad enough, when I had to apologise for the state of the toilets that were then available, but now it has become ridiculously embarrassing. Installing a Portaloo during the few months that the official visitors centre is open will not disguise the fact that no relevant government authority or interested body - national, regional, local, tourist - has enough respect for visitors to the site or the site itself to provide reasonable public toilet facilities during the tourist season, or any at all in the off-season.
I had a group of 43 Germans, mostly of advanced age, at Tara last week. I was informed that only those who sat down in the café were entitled to use the private toilets attached to the café. Can you imagine yourself at the age of 60 or 70, two hours after lunch, being told that after an hour at Tara it will be yet another hour before you reach your hotel in Dublin and can relieve your bladder?
Will those responsible for Co Meath and national tourism please wake up and look at how cheap and uncaring this intolerable situation makes them and the country appear? And so something? - Yours, etc.,
RICHARD MARSH, Legendary Tours, Fontenoy Street, Dublin 7.