Madam, – JJ Murphy asks if the €414,000 cost of preserving corncrakes is justified (March 22nd). To suggest the corncrake conservation programme should be cut for efficiency’s sake is startling. After all, the bird won’t come back once it becomes extinct. In contrast, one single kilometre of motorway costs €8 million, or 19 times more than is spent on corncrake preservation. Put another way, preserving these birds costs the same as 50 metres of motorway.
Picking on a “soft target” such as conservation looks rational and hard-headed only when you ignore the big picture. Consider the huge budgets freely spent on other projects and you realise how little is really directed to preserving our shared heritage. I suggest people such as Mr Murphy look elsewhere for their proposals for budget efficiency. Birds or motorways? What kind of country do we want this to be? – Yours, etc,