Munster Express Online

Dear Sir,

It is with great concern I read the front page headline in last week’s Munster Express concerning De La Salle secondary school’s plan for a multi-million euro development, including a four-hundred space underground car park.

It is truly incredible that an educational establishment, which is meant to instill in all pupils a deeper understanding, appreciation and respect for the earth we live on, have come up with such a project that is unsustainable, car-centred, maintains congestion and is funded from the proceeds of pollution.

It is a well known fact that the areas around schools are the most polluted in any locality, whether in the city, suburbs, villages or countryside. Everyday, young children and adolescents with sensitive and developing respiratory systems are forced to breathe in a cocktail deadly exhaust gases from the cars and SUVs as they are being dropped off.

The area around the Park Road and Dunmore Road was always a nightmare for traffic congestion, pollution and an exclusion zone for pedestrians, cyclists and efficient public transport.

Waterford City Council has gone to great lengths to retrofit a Green Route from the Mall to Dunmore Road to ease traffic, increase public transport and make the city fit for people again. Cities are about people and are not an ‘asphalt complex’ devoted to the throughput of cars.

This project flies in the face of such vital initiatives and should be ‘binned’ forthwith.

Yours etc,

John Fitzgerald

Fahee, Kilmacow

Co. Kilkenny