Madam, – As a resident of Dún Laoghaire for the past 40 years I took great interest in your series of articles Uptown Downtown (April 2nd-8th).
Undoubtedly, we have problems in the town, but there are so many good points to living here. We can still go down the town and buy fresh fish in Lambs, pork products in Hicks of Lower George’s Street and meat vegetables in Murphys, one of our oldest shops. We can buy clothes in Penneys, Shaws, Dunnes and a few other smaller outlets while Marks Spencer provides us with a wide range of foods as do Tesco, which has two large outlets. We also have two long- established jewellers, McManus’s and O’Connors, several patisseries, two hotels, two post offices, a library, a number of restaurantsand an excellent hospital. To say nothing of choirs, a genealogical society, historical societies, music and dramatic societies and other social organisations.
But the jewel in the crown is obviously the seafront and harbour.
At weekends and many afternoons it would be hard to count the numbers of people walking the seafront and East Pier just for the sheer pleasure of it. 2011 will also see the re-opening of the Maritime Museum in Haigh Terrace after complete refurbishment.
One thread which ran through the whole series was the fact that each of the town councils employed restrictive parking measures, even though they knew it discouraged people from visiting their town.
From the Dún Laoghaire angle, if they withdrew the traffic wardens at 5pm instead of 7pm, and allowed free parking on Saturdays, I’m sure it would be a step in the right direction to getting people to “shop local”.
Taking an overall view, this is hardly a decaying town. – Yours, etc,