Sir, – The 1987 Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act was a response to the intolerable abuse of foreign embassy premises. British special services had to risk their lives saving Iranian embassy staff from their fellow Islamist terrorists in 1980, another one had to be cleared of squatters and then in 1984 we had a policewoman shot dead from a window of Gaddafi’s Libyan embassy. Enough of that!
If the law also ensures that bail- jumpers cannot behave with impunity, so much the better. I don’t think, after what was allowed to happen to the British embassy in Dublin in 1972, that we need any lessons from the Irish about observing diplomatic niceties (Editorial, August 17th). – Yours, etc,