Sir, - May I be permitted to use your columns to add a footnote to John Cooney's fine biography of John Charles McQuaid? It was inevitable that Mr Cooney's claims about Dr McQuaid's sexuality would be a cause of controversy, especially, it seems, his recital of Noel Browne's posthumous contribution to the debate.
As the person who first brought Dr Browne's anecdote to John Cooney's attention I think it might be helpful to put my own impressions on the record. Unlike Mr Cooney, I had an opportunity to speak to Noel Browne about this matter shortly before his death.
Towards the end of a long conversation at his Rossaveel home at Easter 1996, Dr Browne told me how he had been approached at the funeral of Sean MacBride by a retired Irish-language school inspector who claimed to have important information about Archbishop McQuaid. The ex-inspector visited Dr Browne at home the next day and told him the story of Archbishop McQuaid's encounter with the teenage son of a Drumcondra publican.
When Dr Browne told me this story he stated clearly that the former inspector was alleging a sexual assault on the boy. Dr Browne's written memoir, which he didn't show me at the time but which is cited by John Cooney, seems less explicit in this regard.
When I asked Noel Browne why he hadn't made the allegation public, he gave two reasons. First, he had no way of knowing if it was true (although equally, he said, he had no reason to disbelieve his informant, whom he judged to be a man of honesty and integrity). Second, he said, coming from him the story would never be taken seriously. He was telling it to me, he said, in the hope that I might be able to discover what, if anything, lay behind it.
However, my efforts to contact the inspector proved fruitless.
I told the story to John Cooney while he was researching his biography of Dr McQuaid, without revealing Noel Browne as my source. John Cooney discovered the Browne connection only after Dr Browne's death.
At no time during my conversation with Dr Browne was he gloating, spiteful or triumphant in relation to this matter. I do not believe he revealed this allegation in order to achieve revenge. Quite the opposite: he was saddened by it and told it in a way that suggested compassion, not just for those who might have suffered at Dr McQuaid's hands, but also for the Archbishop himself.
I believe Dr Browne also told this story to Bishop Pat Buckley who has incorporated it into his doctoral thesis. Bishop Buckley's reaction to the story and his impressions of Browne's motives will make interesting reading. - Yours, etc.,
Mike Milotte, Senior Reporter, RTE Current Affairs, Dublin 4.