Coverage of ‘Repeal’ mural

Sir, – Pastor Paul Carley (Letters , July 27th) wrongly criticses this paper's coverage of the Protect Arts Centre mural in favour of the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Perhaps he has never heard of the Streisand effect (named after a lawsuit initiated by the singer, Barbra Streisand) which is the social phenomenon whereby any attempt to suppress information or an opinion inevitably leads to more attention being paid to the thing in question .

It is therefore expected that The Irish Times should cover matters of public controversy particularly to enable people to see clearly what the fuss was about.

It is unsurprising that critics of the mural are reimplementing their abortion policy, nimbyism writ large. Nimbyism is their modus operandi whether the object of the concern is a wall or a woman’s bodily autonomy. Irish abortions happen with the full force of constitutional right by virtue of the right to travel in the 13th Amendment. It is time for this hypocrisy to end. – Yours, etc,

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BRIAN DINEEN

Clontarf,

Dublin 3