Madam, - The proposal that Fianna Fáil should set up a party organisation in Northern Ireland needs to be considered in the light of its potential effects on the Belfast Agreement. Senior Ministers are already reported to have said that, in the event of the party organising there, it will not contest Westminster elections. If that is so, then what's the point?
Northern Ireland nationalists already have one abstentionist party in Westminster elections. Do they need another one? Everyone seems to have forgotten that Eamon de Valera was elected to the British House of Commons for South Down in the 1930s as an abstentionist while simultaneously holding office as President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. I have never come across anyone who thinks that Northern nationalists benefited in any way from that manoeuvre. - Yours, etc,
ED KELLY, Szeged, Hungary.