Sir, Kevin Myers suggestion (An Irishman's Diary, August 27th) that "Michael Collins could have been a Fianna Fail Taoiseach" is surely the greatest joke of the "silly season".Apart from the historical inaccuracy of the article, which fails to acknowledge that neither Fianna Fail nor Fine Gael existed in 1922, the suggestion that Michael Collins could or would have been a member of the Fianna Fail party and hence Taoiseach is laughable in the extreme, Michael Collins, the greatest Irishman this century, was a statesman who gave of himself unselfishly in the cause of Ireland and his people. That is not the case, as is clearly evident by recent events, of members of the Fianna Fail Party. It is an extraordinary defamation on the people with surnames such as Dillon, Plunkett, Cosgrave, Costello, Fitzgerald and Bruton to suggest that they are "Anglo-Norman" and that in some way, by implication, they are other than true Irish. Since when did people's surname determine their true Gaelic or Irish ancestry? Kevin Myers suggests that "Lynch, Haughey and Ahern" have Gaelic names; so must also, to follow his logic, De Valera, Childers, Boland and Lemass! - Yours, etc.,Patrick O'Connor,Foxford,Co Mayo.