Council about-turn on parking charges ‘a commonsense approach’

SIR – The decision taken by Down District Councillors to now back a plan to concentrate on managing car parking in Newcastle and Castlewellan, rather than imposing car parking charges, marks a commonsense approach as it will allow local traders to safeguard their businesses.

Trying to enforce car parking charges, to bring approx £40,000 a year into the Council’s coffers, would have left many traders in both tourist destination towns struggling still further in the present economic downturn.

From speaking to traders in both towns in recent weeks, it is very clear that many businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to make a respectable living after paying their weekly financial costs and rates.

For the Council to have ignored traders’ views, as well as those of Newcastle Chamber of Commerce and Castlewellan Regeneration, as well as opposition from the local public, would have been an affront to democracy.

Castlewellan and Newcastle are gateways to local tourist attractions, including Castlewellan and Tollymore Forest Parks, Newcastle promenade and beach, and the natural splendour of the Mournes and Slieve Croob.

Additionally, the local economy relies heavily on, and is largely sustained through, local businesses in both towns employing local people.

To have inflicted car parking charges, however small, would have led to the possibility of people shopping elsewhere.

Down District Council now needs to consider how to better utilise existing car parking facilities in each town and to continue listening to traders and the public.

Their decision to support local businesses and the two tourist towns by not introducing car parking charges sets a benchmark for heeding the public mood.

PATRICK CLARKE, Dundrum

New Drumaroad Hall would have been for everyone

SIR – I was surprised to read in last week’s Mourne Observer that a final decision had been taken by the parish priest of Drumaroad not to allow a new hall to be built there.

As a former pupil of Drumaroad Primary school, back in the early Seventies, I used the former hall for indoor physical education and, as a parishioner, for various indoor sports and other activities. My late parents also fundraised for the first hall and supported the plan for the new one.

I know the last hall was built for largely parish use, but I was still happy for the new hall to be used by everyone.

I feel the wrong decision has now been made by the parish priest. I have lived in Drumaroad parish all my life and now see it with no new hall because the Catholic Church cannot take its head out of the sand and accept that people today don’t care whether they are using a hall that is a cross-community one.

The vast majority of educated people in Drumaroad parish and beyond would accept we needed to work with everybody if we were ever to get a new hall. Yes, there are always a few fireside armchair individuals who are still living in the past, but most people were happy as long as a new hall was built by the people who were trying to achieve this.

I really thought there was a new sense of the Catholic Church facing up to its moral responsibilities after it had closed the last hall and then ignored parishioners’ concerns by finally removing the old hall.

Now Drumaroad is without either an old hall or a new one for the benefit of everyone, young and old, to use and enjoy.

My late parents used to say the Catholic Church only wanted parishioners ‘to just pray, pay and obey.’ How right they were.

Following the parish priest’s final decision to deny a new hall to Drumaroad parish, which has nothing other than two churches and an old school, I certainly will not be paying or obeying the Catholic Church but just praying instead.

DRUMAROAD PARISHIONER

Bomb attack won’t be allowed to disrupt everyday life

SIR - In light of the recent car bomb attack on Newry Courthouse we as individuals, businesses, representative organisations and community groups, would like to assure shoppers, tourists and business people across the UK and Ireland that our city remains open for business.

Newry has a vibrant and innovative business and civic community which has always shown resilience. It is this spirit that has allowed the city to flourish in recent times and become one of the major centres of trade and commerce on the island.

This type of attack will not be allowed to disrupt the work of the trading and civic community in the city. Newry has always lived up to Dean Swift’s definition of ‘a proud people’ and that pride only intensifies in the face of adversity.

We stand alongside our political representatives by saying that Newry is open for business and we will not allow this type of event to disrupt everyday life in our city. In less than 24 hours after the blatant attack on our community all commuter routes into the city had reopened and traffic flow returned to normal.

We want to send a very clear message to those that live, visit, shop or work in our city.

We are open with trading levels back to normal. We are ready to welcome all those who wish to join us in making business, enterprise, community and economic renaissance our lasting legacy.

Stakeholders from the Newry business and civic community

Wasting ratepayers’ money

SIR – I had a weird dream last weekend. Honestly. I dreamt that Down had won the Sam Maguire Cup, but that there was complete silence all around me. Even the youngsters stood around in a state of shock, with questions like, “How?” Is it real?” “It couldn’t be, could it?”

When I woke up my head was full of it. Of course it is possible for our County team to win this year, given the months of strenuous training our young men are put through, suffering winter’s cold and summer’s heat, risking limb and even life, literally, to bring sporting glory to our native county.

Content with these thoughts, my mind went, through force of habit, to team Down District Council! The goals they claim to aspire to in the weeks before an election – which has been left off this year’s training programme – are really only make-believe and the points they try to score have absolutely nothing to do with their ‘goals’.

Their ‘training’, for those who are willing to get up off their backsides at all, consists of not only protecting life and limb in comfort, but mainly bolstering their immature egos at everybody and everything else’s expense, thus bringing nothing but disrepute on their county and the people they represent.

They risk absolutely nothing but create risk for everybody around them and instead of treating all-comers to a ‘feast’ of positive and energetic endeavour in their chosen occupation, waste their ratepayers’ time telling them how to use our powers which we have invested in them.

Then they prepare glossy magazines to waste more ratepayers’ money applauding their own false importance.

Ah well, now that team Down District Council is beginning to crack up with the cuckoo coming, I will just look out for another dream, a dream of youngsters, who will then have probably all grown up, standing around in shock when team Mourne District Council win their Gerry Rice award.

GERRY RICE, Newcastle Road, Ballynahinch

Should all this money go to the National Trust?

SIR – Given the proposed A & E and other health cuts, is it desirable that £300,000 in unspent swine flu funds are to be redirected to the Natural Heritage Grants Programme?

As per usual the wealthy National Trust is a beneficiary. This is in spite of the fact that they already are funded directly by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency for Natural Heritage, and according to the NIEA annual report for 2008/09 they received £831,000 in 2009 and £425,000 in 2008.

They also received £91,000 in 2009 and £442,000 in 2008 for Built Heritage. The National Trust also are in receipt of a large number of other grants, such as £3m for the Giant’s Causeway and £98,700 for Murlough and Bloody Bridge from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

As a smallholder, I also look after our natural heritage and have increased biodiversity. However, I don’t get a penny for this.

In the Mournes, the Mourne Trustees look after a larger area of protected landscape and provide more public access than the National Trust. Yet, I am not aware of any significant funding to any of the Trustee groups.

If others are expected to look after our heritage without public money, why can’t the National Trust?

The commercial activities of the National Trust also have the potential to impact on our public services. They do not pay tax, but are one of our biggest businesses and this is a loss of revenue for the Exchequer.

I also fear they are going to achieve a “dominant position” in tourism in the local area and thus “crowd out” small businesses that would otherwise pay tax for many years in the future. Therefore, I would ask the candidates in the forthcoming election to answer the following question:

“Is it fair that a large wealthy body – a quango or a charity such as the National Trust –has almost unlimited access to the public purse, when small businesses that operate locally such as farms, shops and restaurants, have little access to any money and might be disadvantaged by the provision of a grant to a local competitor?”

I would strongly argue that thriving locally owned (tax paying) businesses are essential to ensure that we are able to meet the future demands of the Health Service.

FRANK HARPER, Bloody Bridge, Newcastle

‘Other parties should follow SDLP agenda’

SIR – When Civil Rights leaders formed the SDLP they agreed that Northern Ireland’s constitutional position, its divisions and injustices could be resolved by peaceful politics. The shedding of blood was neither required nor justified.

Others thought differently. Consequently, 3,600 were murdered, mostly by IRA bombs and bullets. Republicans categorised their killings as legitimate targets, or the regrettable consequences of war.

The former category included everyone from security forces to shop assistants who served them. The latter included children murdered by stray bullets and no-warning bombs.

Loyalists explained their killings as justifiable retaliation, or defence of the Union. Provisionals and loyalists only used the word “murder” for the other’s killings.

This whole ghastly nightmare, being air-brushed from history, has now gone full circle to the SDLP starting point. Revision of that dreadful, futile terrorist campaign is such that those who lived through it begin to doubt their memory of it.

Nevertheless, for Sinn Fein and the DUP to belatedly come onto the SDLP agenda is a good thing, but why not opt for the real deal – the party that consistently gives priority to human and civil rights also to equality – and begin by rightfully appointing SDLP’s Alban Maginness as Minister for Policing and Justice.

BRIAN ROONEY, 14 The Heights, Downpatrick

Kilkeel street collection

SIR — I would like to take the opportunity through your paper to express my appreciation to the people of Kilkeel for their generous support of our street collection held on Saturday, 20 February, where we raised a total of £903.88.

All the money raised will be used to support and help maintain the services of Action MS.

JOHN HAYES, Dungannon

Record request

SIR — I would like to know if anybody has a copy of the Bridie Gallagher LP The Girl from Donegal.

I wonder if they would lend me it, so that I can record the song Killarney and You from it.

LEONARD CHARLES, Burrenview Way, Newcastle