I gather that while we were away in the summer there was some controversy about the high rate of Irish suicides.
There was a letter to the Irish Times yesterday which prompted me to email a letter to them for the first time ever.
They didn’t publish it but now I can do so myself.

Martin Dwyer
107 Griffith Place,
Waterford

Madam

In Patrick J. Pynes letter, on September 5th, he wonders if the drink-driving laws and their curb on rural socialisation are contributing to the increased male rural suicide rate.

He cites Dr Anne Cleary of UCD as saying that the Mediterranean countries, with their slower pace of life, have fewer suicides.

He misses the point. The French drink driving laws are just as severe as ours, it is the French tradition of living together in villages, not isolated in their farms that makes the difference. I have just come back from a summer in the Herault in Languedoc where the villages are spread out like the buttons in an eiderdown with no dwellings in between. At night the farm workers and the vignerons come back to the villages from their vineyards. Here they are quite likely to take their chairs out onto the streets and enjoy each others company for the evening.

Yours etc.

Martin Dwyer