After spending half a lifetime battling for better conditions and quality for patients I felt

After spending half a lifetime battling for better conditions and quality for patients, I felt constrained to spend the last decade in largely private practice. I actually earned less than before, but I was able to work in blessed peace, unhampered by stultifying bureaucracy and to offer my patients what I considered best for each individual's need.A pensioner today, I attend my own dentist on a private basis. Ten years later my sister's daughter and her husband attended an international barbecue competition in Eire, and the locals expressed strongly anti-British sentiments. My sister was so incensed that she wrote to our Irish uncle, who had just previously stayed with her, complaining of the gross rudeness her daughter had been subjected to in the Republic.If Mr O'Meachair was being serious, I suggest he thinks again, and thanks the luck of the Irish for having as neighbours so tolerant and generous a people as the British.Yours faithfully,E PAULLLondon, SW1617 March. As she and my sister were driven through the centre of the town, the Irish relative driving them said: "I will close the window so that IRA sympathisers cannot hear your English accent." My mother, a hater of the IRA, was warned to guard her tongue when she visited the local Woolworth store.

Even when some of the Irish took to killing and maiming their hosts, the British, a moderate and sensible people, acknowledged that the suffering was caused by an unrepresentative minority and continued, in the main, to treat the Irish decently.Contrast this to my late mother's experience when she went back to her home town in south-west Ireland - where she lived through the Troubles - at the time of Bobby Sands's hunger strike. After throwing off the British yoke, hundreds of thousands of southern Irish, including some of my own relatives, decided that life is better under British rule and sought refuge from reactionary Catholicism, unemployment and poverty among their late oppressors. The British, not given to bearing grudges, have treated those who rejected them as honorary British citizens, allowing them to compete for jobs and accommodation in times of high unemployment and homelessness in Britain. From Mr E. Paull Sir: As I read Gearoid O'Meachair's letter (17 March) berating the British for their maltreatment of the Irish in Britain, I thought the Irish must celebrate both St Patrick's Day and their equivalent of April Fools' Day together. The UK government, therefore, would not be able to insist on coaches registered in other EC member states having to have seatbelts.

However, the UK government is free to enforce the introduction of seat belts on all coaches and buses registered in the UK if it wants to do so.I recommend reading the Europa WWW server on http:/ / www.cec.lu/ - if only for its section on "Euromyths'', which your correspondents would be wise to consult before they parrot the obfuscatory anti-EU government line.Yours faithfully,MARK RISONCambridge17 March. The Commission has long backed the introduction of laws making this compulsory throughout the EC. Nevertheless, it is true that there has been little movement on this for some years now as the majority of EC countries have opposed it, chiefly on the grounds of the costs involved. From Mr Mark Rison Sir: A small paragraph on yesterday's front page of the Independent states that regulations about seatbelts in coaches and buses "will only apply to vehicles carrying children as otherwise they would conflict with EU rules which do not specify the need for belts''. Let me simply quote from http:// www.cec.lu/en/comm/dg10/em/m10.html:Statement: Britain is powerless to introduce and enforce legislation on the compulsory fitting of seatbelts on coaches and buses in the UK without the backing of the European Commission and the agreement of all other EC countries.Response: No. In the days when Eugene Black was president of the Bank it was still a cautious lender, but after that it became an aggressive lender.Yours faithfully,MIKAEL GRUTLondon, SW19. From Mr Mikael Grut Sir: Hamish McRae (13 March), writes that the World Bank should ask itself what it is for. The Bank's Articles of Agreement state that the purposes of the Bank are to facilitate the investment of capital for productive purposes, to promote private foreign investment, and to supplement such investment when necessary; ie, to be a facilitator, a promoter, a supplementor, not a big lender in its own right. In accordance with these principles, the Bank used to call itself the "lender of last resort", but all that was forgotten many years ago.