Sir, - Sociologist Ethel Crowley's tedious letter (January 4th) is typical of the middle class bleating about a lost Ireland where first among our thoughts were caring for one another and taking the time for a quiet word of support to other sons and daughters of "a misty-eyed, redhaired maiden".
Second to mind must have been squirreling away money in offshore accounts, accepting bribes to build monstrosities that blight our towns and countryside and sitting on hands while hundreds of thousands emigrated.
I'm sure it's a great shame for such people that they can no longer buy houses for their daughters while they study in Dublin because young people with enough money to buy them are staying in the city. It must be a curse that their hotel bars are full of youngsters with enough money to drink there, as opposed to working there. It must be criminal to have whippersnappers from Tuam or Termonfeckin cutting them off in traffic rather than walking off to the dole office wringing their caps.
It is a constant source of amazement to me how people bemoan the fact that the Irish economy is finally beginning to reflect of the EU average. It astounds me that people despair of a cultural paucity because the most highly educated of the Irish population choose to stay here or to return home. It disturbs me that people, particularly sociologists, should hark back to a day when we were poor but honest and when ambitious youth had the decency to go to other countries and outshine their elders.
Reactionary nonsense like Ms Crowley's belongs in the golf clubs and at the the dinner tables of the old and cosseted Ireland. It is a shame that people might take it seriously on a page of a national newspaper. - Yours, etc.,
Gerry Carr, Little Ship Street, Dublin 8.