Madam, - Dick Roche knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He says his abolition of the cap on store size is good for competition and good for choice. It is not. In real life David rarely, if ever, beats Goliath. Giants simply trample all around them.
The result of his decision will not be greater competition but less, as smaller shops are forced to close against impossible competitive odds. This means less choice and less competition.
He says that opponents of change are scaremongering, that they are against progress, but has he seen a typical French village recently where all the traditional shops are gone? Has he read the reports of countryside decline in England and Wales?
Giant stores wield enormous power, enough power to control both the marketplace and the supply chain. This will give lower prices in the short run but the long run the consequences are huge as these giants squeeze the life-blood out of both supplier and competitor.
Once again Fianna Fáil seem to have put a minister in the Department of the Environment who is actually an enemy within. - Yours, etc.,
JERRY CROWLEY, Kilpedder, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - IKEA is welcomed as a source of cheap furniture (as if prices would not rocket once IKEA was breathing this heady Southern air) and justified as a means of regenerating Ballymun (as if there were no other way). The mantra of choice is chanted as if it was a greater human need than a habitable planet. But no thought is given to extra waste.
Superstores encourage impulse buying, even more than local stores. Customers who have driven scores of miles, maybe with no particular purchase in mind, and perhaps queued for ages too, are reluctant to return empty-handed. The outcome in many cases will be that an appliance or a piece of furniture with years of life left in it will end up in a landfill near home to make room for a new acquisition. Moreover, all the packaging will inevitably end up in the domestic waste stream, from which relatively little gets recycled. (In contrast, local stores could be required to take back packaging for recycling when they deliver.)
Is this Government incapable of seeing the bigger picture? - Yours, etc.,
DUNCAN J. MARTIN, Vice-Chair, Irish Centre, Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, Corbally, Limerick.