Madam, - Do "we, the people of Éire" really know the ethos of the Constitution we enacted 70 years ago this year, on July 1st?
The question is prompted by Tom Cooper's letter of December 30th, reacting to Bono's acceptance of an honorary knighthood. This acceptance of a "British state honour", he writes, "should be seen as an attack on the republican and egalitarian ethos of Bunreacht na hÉireann".
And Bono is not the only culprit, it seems: the Irish Government also has to face the music. Mr Cooper implies that the republican ethos is being reneged upon, or perhaps subverted, by "recent [ unspecified] Irish Government actions and trends" which amount to "an attempt to incrementally deconstruct the Irish State and restore a British dimension".
These charges are given a sinister aspect by the insinuation that Bono's award might even be part of a cunning British plot to "absorb or annex [ this] smaller country".
On the face of it, Mr Cooper would appear to be on solid ground - the problem of the Irish nation's "British dimension" is nowhere acknowledged in the Constitution. Although the 1916 Proclamation has recognised the Protestant and unionist/loyalist people as part of the "children of the nation", the Constitution recognises only "our fathers" and their "centuries of trial" and "heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our nation".
With part of our country still under British control, it is only reasonable to interpret the sequencing of aims in the preamble to the Constitution as justifying a delay of concord with Britain until "the unity of our country [ has been] restored." On this evidence it might seem clear that the Orange section of the Irish nation has been air-brushed from the Constitution, and recognition is given only to the ancient Irish (Catholic) nation - a "green only" ethos.
However, that is to miss the significance of Article 7, which states that "the national flag is the Tricolour of green, white and orange". Unhappily (and for far too long), we have been content with the inane shibboleth "peace between Orange and Green" as an adequate explanation of the meaning of the Tricolour. But, as a Stationery Office booklet, An Bhratach Náisiúnta makes clear, "the Irish Tricolour is essentially a flag of union. The combination of both colours in [ it], with the white between in token of brotherhood, symbolises the union of the different stocks in a common nationality". So we do have a "British dimension" in the Constitution.
The lack of trust between Orange and Green so evident in Northern Ireland today highlights how this concept of the Irish nation and its nationality is far from maturity. The Government would do the Irish people, at home and abroad, a patriotic service were it to arrange for a definitive elucidation of the Tricolour's symbolism and its essential meaning in relation to the struggle for total Irish freedom. - Yours, etc,
JAMES McGEEVER, Dublin Road, Kingscourt, Co Cavan.