Dr Martin Mansergh, special adviser to the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has sprung to the defence of the US ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, following the attack on her by the former US ambassador to Britain. Ray Seitz said she was wilful and skittish and an apologist for the IRA; Mansergh says she's the finest US ambassador we ever had.
Speaking at the Soloheadbeg commemoration in Tipperary last Sunday, he said Kennedy Smith's motives had been misrepresented and distorted. "In 1994, for the first time in our history, as we have been reminded by some recent undiplomatic memoirs, an American president listened on Ireland to a Kennedy in Dublin . . . rather than to the British establishment in London, thus helping to pave the way for an IRA ceasefire the following autumn."