Sir, – Now that we have been informed that two women Cabinet Ministers, Jan O'Sullivan and Heather Humphreys, boxer Katie Taylor and Bono are all from a Protestant background, courtesy of Andy Pollak ("The Republic is now a warm place for Protestants", Rite & Reason, October 13th), perhaps he might enlighten us as to the significance of this information and what he suggests we should do with it?
In line with what I believe to be the overwhelming majority of people on this side of the Border, I have no wish to know the religious affiliation of anyone, be they sporting icons, musicians, politicians, judges, work colleagues or neighbours. I am indifferent, but not disrespectful, to whatever religious conviction, or none, a person has an allegiance to.
I find Andy Pollak’s claim that the Republic “isn’t such an alien place these days – in many ways it is a more open-minded, tolerant and liberal society than the North” to be gratuitously insulting.
To be compared, even if it is favourably, with the North on issues of tolerance displays an ignorance of the changed State that is the Republic. In February 2007, a survey carried out by researchers at the University of Ulster suggested Northern Ireland was one of the most intolerant places in the western world. People in the North, it found, were the least likely to want to live beside someone of a different race and were more opposed to migrant workers than people in most of the 19 countries surveyed.
This is not to say that we here in the South do not have our own bigots and racists. We do, of course, but we do not tend to elect them to our parliament, as has happened on occasion in the North. – Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W.