Althea Preiss writes:
I was very distressed to read on the front page of the City Times (June 28) the comment by John Connolly that Dublin “was a terrible place to grow up”.
My father was born in 1897, in Kildare, the fourth of the five sons my grandparents had.
They all grew up between Kildare and Dublin.
One died at the battle of the Somme.
One met my mother and lived in South Africa.
One met an English girl and lived in southern England.
The remaining two spent their entire remaining 93 and 83 years in Dublin.
My cousins were born and reared in Dublin, and their children and grandchildren, reared and lived in Dublin, with one exception – a young girl who met an English man, but yearns to return to Dublin.
I have visited Ireland and then South Africa on numerous occasions.
Not once have I heard any of them criticise Dublin.
In fact, quite the opposite.
I would really appreciate it if Mr Connolly would explain why he found Dublin a terrible place to grow up.
Editor’s note:
John Connolly responded:
In the 1980s, Ireland was known as the “sick man of Europe”.
Poverty was endemic, with more than one million people, out of a population of less than four million, living below the poverty line.
More than 50 per cent of children were in classes of 35 or more. More than half of all parents had no education beyond primary level. One third of pensioners living alone had no kitchen sink or flush toilet.
5 000 pensioners in the Dublin area were assessed as living in “very bad” conditions, and 1000 in “squalor”.
In 1986, the year after I left school, the unemployment rate in Ireland was 18 per cent – 250 000 people – and total employment in the economy was just over one million, leaving a tax base that was heavily penalised but also insufficient to support the economy.
Emigration at university level was greater than 30 per cent, and emigration at the unskilled end of the labour market was running at a similar level. Total emigration was 25 000 per annum, most of them young people.
The national deficit was more than 10 per cent of GDP, and government debt was 115 per cent of GDP. Ten per cent of 15 to 24 year olds were heroin users.
Thirty per cent of intravenous drug users were HIV positive.
While I’m very glad to hear that Ms Preiss’s relatives appeared to have enjoyed a good standard of living, a significant proportion of the population was not so fortunate.
I grew up in Rialto, one of the most deprived areas of the inner city, so I can speak with some degree of authority.
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