Sir, - Your correspondent Alison Healy errs (The Irish Times, August 17th) when she refers to the television programme The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name as "RTE's screening of its first documentary on being gay in Ireland".
It is far from being the first such programme. In the Tuesday Report series made by RTE itself (and not by a commissioned production company) as long ago as the early 1970s, I scripted and presented a 50-minute documentary on male and female homosexuality in Ireland. Both the director and the researcher were RTE staffers, and the programme was not a mere glimpse of what was then a problem for gay men and the law, but a full-length documentary dealing with many of the then controversial aspects of homosexuality.
In fact last Tuesday's programme used several excerpts from our film, including a touching interview with the mother of a young gay man and a tiny bit of the interview we did with Dr Noel Browne. Other shots used included some of David Norris, then as now a stalwart among those seeking human rights for gays.
It is a sign of the times - and a good thing, too - that the current programme has caused so little upset or controversy among viewers. In our case the documentary was referred to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, largely because of sequences of men dancing together in a gay club in Parnell Square.
It would be wrong to suggest that RTE had to wait until the 21st century to screen a programme on a problem which was widely discussed and written about more than 30 years ago. - Yours, etc.,
Cathal O'Shannon, Anglesea Road, Dublin 4.