Madam, - The ending of the dual mandate should give our parliamentarians a changed perspective on their functions. Liberated from pot-holes, they will be able to concentrate on national issues.
Edmund Burke would be pleased. As he told the electors of Bristol in 1774, "parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament."
Can we now look forward to a reformed and more effective parliament that will recover its central role in the formation of public policy? - Yours, etc.,
T. O'CONNOR, Churchtown, Dublin 14.