Sir, – Further to Michael Harding's "Forestry swallows houses – its onward march is unrelenting in the west" (December 13th), selective nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Approximately 80 per cent of Ireland was once covered in forest, although human activity brought this as low as 1 per cent in the modern era.
This deforestation – the worst of any European country – has contributed to widespread flooding, the necessity of industrial-scale destruction of bogs for fuel, and the widespread degradation and erosion of our country’s soil.
It appears your writer is sentimental for an era coinciding with the zenith of modern deforestation, not one corresponding to any original Irish rural identity. – Yours, etc,
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IAN BRUNSWICK,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.