Sir, - It is long past time for me to express my appreciation to The Irish Times for having made Breda O'Brien one of its regular columnists. Just before she first appeared in your pages, I was about to give up on you. Aside from your token fifth columnist, Kevin Myers, every Irish Times commentator was so clearly singing from the same hymn-sheet that I was convinced that you did not understand the purpose of opinion pieces. Newspapers exist to inform their readers, not to "form" them; individual commentators may write to persuade, but their editors should be publishing only to inform us that the opinion exists, by presenting it to us in its most effective form.
Breda O'Brien, of course, is your only columnist singing from any sort of hymn-sheet at all - and the different perspective she brings to issues is a welcome one. Who else, for example, would have detected in the "Exploring Masculinities" programme (Opinion, October 14th) signs that we are, from what appear to be the best of motives, moving towards the darkness that has so attracted our kind throughout history: that of deciding what a "real" human being is and finding that some of us don't measure up?
That column also demonstrated the most distinguishing - and distinguished - feature of her work: she is among the very few who seem to remember that opinion pieces are a form of journalism. How many other columnists in Ireland would have read 420 pages of material and studied the programme's video before favouring us with their opinions? As a result she was able to tell us, in her "informed" opinion, not only what was bad and dangerous about the programme, but also what was good and useful.
Well done, Breda O'Brien; well done, The Irish Times! - Yours, etc.,
William Hunt, Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.