Madam, - A report on the Easter Rising commemoration in your edition of March 8th mentioned that 900 relatives of 1916 leaders and participants had been invited to view the event next month from a stand on O'Connell Street. However, no members of the Collins family have been invited.
I wrote to Mr Ahern to clarify this and I was disappointed to receive a letter saying that this was so. As a relative of Collins I was angry and annoyed that Michael Collins's small yet pivotal role in the GPO in 1916 had been overlooked.
It seems to me that we have been snubbed because of our politics and that the Government has hijacked this event for its own political agenda.
Mr Ahern wrote to me saying that only relatives of those who died in 1916 had been invited, but I can hardly imagine that the de Valera family were not invited. - Yours, etc,
SIOBHÁN McDERMOTT,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.