Sir, – If politics is the art of the possible, then surely the Government has failed abjectly to deliver clean air and better public health with a nationwide smoky coal ban.
Notwithstanding majority support in the Dáil, it opted to bring in the ban in a number of smaller towns.
This, despite advice from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that extending the ban to smaller towns will not be effective as many people commute daily from smaller towns and can easily circumvent the ban by quite legally buying smoky fuel outside ban areas.
Presumably one of the reasons a nationwide ban is supported by a plethora of previous Ministers is the improved efficacy it would bring to the existing ban, and this rationale is set out in Government publications. The coal industry in Ireland seems to have been ignored and is now dismayed by an approach that will compound and perpetuate the enforcement difficulties of poorly resourced local authorities.
Minister for the Environment Bruton seems to have been poorly served by his coterie of advisers, including the Attorney General, who seem to have stayed in their ivory towers in search of a solution. Meanwhile, contrary to the EPA advice, a Government body under Mr Bruton’s aegis, Bord na Móna, is encouraging people with a series of radio adverts to light solid-fuel fires. You couldn’t make this up.
It’s what, in other circumstances, the Attorney General might call a dog’s dinner! – Yours, etc,
JOHN J O’GRADY,
Dublin 20.