DEAR SIR: We are being warned of electricity winter shortages for the next few years – why don’t we just turn off some of the miles and miles of unnecessary public lighting? According to my father, lights in some towns in the 1950s were routinely switched off at a certain time, the theory being, why light up empty streets.

In 2008, Paris gangs stole miles of electricity cables from autoroutes around Paris and after the initial shock, it was discovered people actually didn’t have more crashes and the lights proved unnecessary as may be the case with many street lights in Ireland.

Why, as a result of our uncontrolled ribbon development and one-off housing, coupled with our hundreds of kilometres of motorways and roads, do we now light up our whole countryside unnecessarily? Recent research is indicating light pollution as a major contributory factor to the huge reduction in insect numbers.

So, in conclusion, I would ask our policymakers to consider a dark sky policy and thereby help to solve our current energy deficiency crisis.