Sir, - It is at least a pity that Dr Garret FitzGerald (June 13th) should advocate an electoral system for the Republic of Ireland which would not be suitable for Northern Ireland.
In the Republic, as he said, many single-seat constituencies would be held by Fianna Fail; in the North, they would probably be held either by an unashamed unionist or by a similar nationalist.
PR-STV has many attributes, all of which are worth retaining. Its most obvious advantage is the fact that it allows the voter to be pluralist, to vote cross-candidate, cross-gender, cross-party and even cross-community. It also has some disadvantages, of course, few of which are rectified by the German system. A more sensible approach, therefore, is to modify PR-STV as the Maltese have done, by use of a top-up system. This was first advocated for the North in 1996 by the Green Party, and has since been adopted by DL, NIWC and others.
It should also be pointed out that Brian Lenihan TD attended the launch of another recent study to which Dr FitzGerald did not refer - this Institute's "Beyond the Tyranny of the Majority", which shows PR-STV + top-up to be less majoritarian and far more inclusive than Germany's system. - Yours, etc., P J Emerson, Director,
The de Borda Institute, Ballysillan Road, Belfast BT14 7QQ, N. Ireland.