Madam, - I appreciate Dr Garret FitzGerald's courteous and considered reply (April 24th) to my letter of April 19th, but I crave your indulgence one more time to answer a couple of the more contentious points he made therein.
While it is accepted that southern Ireland would eventually have achieved a political status much as it has now, it is a matter of legitimate discussion as to the effect that the method and timing of our independence (in essence, violence) had on southern Ireland's economy. It is certainly arguable that, had we had access to transfers from the UK for longer than we did, our social and economic infrastructure might have been at a standard which would have led to faster growth, earlier.
I can do no better than to refer, as Dr FitzGerald does, to the economist Michael Casey's article "The myth of our economic autonomy" which, fortuitously, also appeared on April 19th. Dr FitzGerald rather plays down Casey's central conclusion, which is that, when we did have control over our destiny, we were not very good at getting results; and - referring to our surrender to EU and US influences - that "as we began to lose autonomy, and as the scope for domestic policy action shrank, the economy began to perform extremely well".
This seems to be in direct contradiction of Dr FitzGerald's thesis that, without independence in 1922, and in the violent manner in which it was brought about, we would not have been able to achieve the (only very recent) prosperity that we now apparently have. I will leave economists and economic historians to judge whose view best fits the facts.
Dr FitzGerald takes me to task in relation to the effect that the revolutionary period 1918-23 had on southern Irish Protestant attitudes to the new State. In particular, he suggests that Protestant numbers had been in decline since at least 1871, and continued after 1926.
Of course they were - so were Catholic numbers. But the point is that the proportion of Protestants to Catholics remained more or less constant in the 20 years before 1911. The fate of the southern Protestant population after 1923 or so is not relevant to the argument about why so many left between 1918 and that former date. What is relevant is that the proportionate decline in each community in the vital years covering the violent birth of the State were vastly different. The Protestant population of the 26 counties shrank by 34 per cent between 1911 and 1926. The Catholic population declined by only 2.2 per cent during that same period.
The point I was making still stands: the sudden drain of a significant proportion of an economically, socially and culturally important segment of the population cannot have been of advantage to the new State; and it was the manner of its foundation which was largely responsible for this. - Yours, etc,
IAN D'ALTON, Naas, Co Kildare.