Madam, - Charles J Haughey's record on the international stage was, like his domestic performance, marked by pragmatism rather than principle.
While Paul Gillespie (The Irish Times, June 14th) rightly views the 1990 Irish presidency of the EU as a key highlight of the former taoiseach's tenure, perhaps the most significant and long-lasting lesson Mr Haughey learnt in Europe was to underpin the social partnership process. Many commentators in both the print and broadcast media in recent days have loosely and erroneously referred to Mr Haughey as the initiator of this project. In fact it was the landmark NESC document of 1986 - when Mr Haughey was in opposition - which first advocated this approach.
Indeed the consensus-oriented approach to macro-managing the economy was part of a wider European trend seen in various guises in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and across the Scandinavian states. Plaudits are due to Mr Haughey for deviating from the line taken at the time by Mrs Thatcher's neo-liberal economic management, as Ireland had traditionally bowed to our neighbour due to economic necessity. However, such plaudits are for implementing the approach and persevering in it, rather than for being the originator of the idea.
On other key European issues - the Single European Act, neutrality, and attitudes to foreign policy crises of the time - Mr Haughey's record can be seen as reactive and inherently political, rather than by being guided by principle or ideology. This is not to speak poorly of the recently departed, but let not the revisionists rewrite history amid the tributes to a charismatic and complex, but ultimately flawed politician. - Yours, etc,
GERARD ARTHURS, Course Director, MBA in International Business, Lecturer in European Union Studies, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.
Madam, - Since the death of Charles Haughey last week we have witnessed an orgy of hypocrisy in the true style of Fianna Fáil culture past and present. - Yours, etc,
TOM CONNOR, Togher, Co Louth.