Madam, - Dear oh dear, it must be a long time since Senator Brendan Ryan (B.E.) studied and practised his engineering. His view (July 13th) that engineering conclusions are invalid unless each and every application is first subjected to specific physical experimentation would put a halt to most construction activity worldwide. Imagine. No blocks of flats (we didn't test a life-size dummy block in a wind tunnel or earthquake simulator). No bridges (ditto). No Boeing 747 or Airbus 380 (test flights were phoney because the planes weren't full of passengers). No oil (because each oil-well ever drilled is unique and thus untested).
The days when design involved building things progressively stronger until they stopped breaking are long gone. The whole point of engineering is to apply to future constructions the existing knowledge of mathematics, of physics, of material properties, of dynamic behaviour and so forth. Further research and experimentation constantly take place to add to this body of knowledge where required and to foster innovation.
For Senator Ryan to suggest that building a high-pressure gas pipeline is somehow "entirely new and untested" is ludicrous. They are built incessantly across the industry and across the globe. There is a mountain of knowledge about how different steels react to pressure, temperature, chemicals, impact. Compared with other engineering challenges, pipeline design is easy.
It is just a shame that Shell appears unwilling to debate and defend its Mayo pipeline openly in the media, as this breeds suspicion in the public mind. But it is no evidence that the pipeline is unsafe. On the contrary, all the published information points to the conclusion that the risks meet the crucial criterion of ALARP, "as low as reasonably practicable", which was established after the North Sea oil platform Piper Alpha exploded in 1988. - Yours, etc,
Tony Allwright
(B.E., M.Eng.Sc),
Killiney,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - Your edition of July 11th reports that a petition in support of the "Rossport Five" was circulated at the Connaught Football Final last Sunday in Galway. I attended the game and duly gave my support to the petition. I have since discovered yesterday that this petition was circulated not by concerned residents, but by the Sinn Féin party.
I ask the question: would so many signatures have been collected if people knew the full score? - Is mise,
SEAN O'GADHRA,
Northbrook Walk,
Dublin 6.