Madam, - I find it fascinating that the IRA and Sinn Féin find it so difficult to accept that they are being accused of robbing a bank or at least knowing about it, without a proper trial, evidence offered, witnesses called, judge or jury. I suppose it seems so much like one of those kangaroo courts. Now they must take a dose of their own medicine and that is always hard to swallow. - Yours, etc.
DECLAN MORIARTY,
Wheatfields Close,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22.
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Madam, - A stranger reading reports and opinions throughout Ireland in recent weeks could be excused for thinking that the IRA had introduced criminality to the Six Counties. The truth is that it would not be in existence at all were it not that agents of the British Empire have been robbing and murdering Irish people, Catholic and Protestant, for ten centuries. The clarion call of Wolfe Tone has lost none of its relevance: "Break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils".
Religious persecution was not confined to Catholics but extended to Presbyterians and the 1798 hero Henry Joy McCracken was a Presbyterian. Maybe the bigotry of the Paisleys, senior and junior, is fuelled by embarrassment. - Yours, etc.,
AUSTIN KENNAN,
Meadow Grove,
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.