Madam, - As someone who has spent over 30 years researching up close, in and under the bogs of North Mayo, I cannot but be hugely impressed by the speed and certainty with which a fellow professor, from a distance of over five miles, has been able to identify "overgrazing" as the sole cause of the Pollatomish landslides. What a pity he did not convey his knowledge of the impending disaster to the local peasants over whose lands he was walking.
Before conveying his discovery to the wider public through your letters page last Tuesday I am sure he has conveyed his research findings to Mayo County Council so that it may dispense with the services of the geologists, hydrologists, meteorologists, soil scientists, bog specialists and engineers whom they have commissioned to identify the cause, the current instability and future risk from further landslides.
Next time your environmental correspondent writes about the "Belmullet gas terminal" he would do well to consult such an oracle of prescience and precision. Meanwhile the traumatised people of Pollatomish and Glengad who have lost their farms and some of the graves of their loved ones, and who may even lose their homes, will appreciate the authoritative pronouncement from the learned professor of classics that they themselves are the sole authors of their own misfortune. - Yours, etc.,
Prof SEAMAS CAULFIELD, Belderrig, Co Mayo.