Madam, - Occasionally, very occasionally, I am prepared to forgive Kevin Myers everything. Having read his piece on the funeral of Jean McConville (An Irishman's Diary, November 6th), this is one of those occasions. What a morally bankrupt country we are living in. We are fortunate to have somebody who is not afraid to call a stink a stink, however uncool that may be. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK KELLY, Puckane, Nenagh, Co Tipperary.
Madam, - Anyone with a heart would be moved to read Kevin Myers's description of the awful death of Jean McConville at the hands of the IRA, though of course we know the story already.
On one point, however, I disagree with Mr Myers. He implies that the present easy acceptance of apologists for the IRA, who are now preening themselves in the corridors of power North and South, is the result of the present "peace" process.
Surely the roots go much deeper than that. For all the years that nationalist terrorists meted out death and destruction in the North and in Britain, we in the South sat on our hands. Though it was a very different matter when they turned their attention to us, we wouldn't agree to any effective measures being taken to halt the carnage in the North. We could have agreed to internment North and South. We could have facilitated extradition or taken any number of smaller steps to clamp down on this menace.
The reason we didn't is that we didn't care, to put it charitably. As a small example, I remember attending protests outside Sinn Féin's headquarters in Dublin at the height of the Troubles which attracted a pitiful handful of people. It was quite a different matter after Bloody Sunday, when the hated Brits were at fault. Worse, many of us were always prepared to excuse the IRA and to sympathise with them on any flimsy pretext.
The fact is that these murderous thugs and their apologists will be incorporated into the pantheon of nationalist heroes, if they aren't already, and their victims will be forgotten. That's the way we like it. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID HERMAN, Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.