Sir, – I would like to emphasise immediately that, to the best of my knowledge, this country is our country.
I am not aware of any election deal whereby we hand ownership of it to a succession of governments. They are supposed to be merely running our country for our benefit, the people who pay their salaries. Their latest plan to take another part of our country from us to help pay for their failures and greed, in this case the Wicklow forests, and sell them to somebody else is a disgrace.
Back in the 1990s, hundreds of us around here, led by local activist Paddy O'Toole, and willingly assisted by well-known musicians such as Hothouse Flowers, chained ourselves to trees and fought the sale of the Coollattin Woods for weeks – eventually successfully. To see yet another government trying to sell our beautiful land from under our feet is nauseating. At least some independent TDs, such as Stephen Donnelly, have some pride in a TD's duties and are also fighting this latest outrageous suggestion. – Yours, etc,
RICHARD D BARTON,
Kevin Street,
Tinahely, Co Wicklow.