A chara, - The announcement that Fianna Fáil is to look at becoming an all-island party should be welcomed. Northern Ireland is a small place and nationalist voters should be able to vote for several all-island parties.
As a member of Fine Gael I urge my party also to be all-island. Currently Young Fine Gael has a committee in Northern Ireland. We should go further, though, and assist in ensuring that voters in Northern Ireland have a broad choice of candidates and parties to vote for. Standing in the North is the right thing to do.
Currently Sinn Féin is the only all-island party Northern nationalists can vote for. The Sinn Féin march has been reversed in the South. Through widening the choice of parties to vote for in the North I believe Sinn Féin's electoral strength will eventually shrink and then dissolve. - Is mise,
DARREN J PRIOR, Castleknock Crescent, Dublin 15.
Madam, - In November the Labour Party will hold its annual conference in Wexford. Perhaps one of the most pertinent motions up for discussion will be a motion to change the Labour Party constitution to allow party members contest elections at local level in Northern Ireland.
This motion has the potential to mark a small but critical step in transforming the political dynamic throughout the island of Ireland.
For too long the electorate north of the Border have been forced to choose between the myopic and one-dimensional historical narratives of either nationalism or unionism. The Belfast Agreement has essentially served to institutionalise this already existing sectarian political division.
Fianna Fáil's ambitions to organise in Northern Ireland are nothing more than a different shade of the "four green fields" nationalism already embodied by Sinn Féin.
The Labour Party has the potential to offer a viable secular and socialist alternative. A strong active Labour Party operating on all-Ireland basis has the potential to act as a fulcrum for all progressive groups on the island who want to ensure that access to affordable housing, equality in education and the protection of public services are pushed to the top of the political agenda.
I hope that delegates to the Labour Party conference grasp this opportunity and begin the difficult but critical task of giving everyone on the island a chance to vote for a party committed to secular and socialist politics. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK NULTY, (Labour Party member), Greenridge Court, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15.