Madam, - There has been one continuing problem with the Sinn Féin and Provisional IRA involvement in the peace process. This is their incessant demand to be given pay-offs in increased political power for each step, or indeed apparent step, toward full cessation of violent activity. Hence, from their perspective, any act of decommissioning must be met by the reward of increased political power.
This is a deception equivalent to that of an alcoholic in treatment who barters his new-found days of sobriety for increased tolerance of other unacceptable carry-on. Such bartering can be a part of the healing for a limited period only. It cannot go on as a continuing element in a healing process. It is a Faustian pact and can only do long-term harm to political life and culture in Ireland. The phase of bargaining has had its day.
Real peacemaking does involve exchanges between the former protagonists, but can never be built on bargaining. The IRA's efforts to trade for a so-called peace - in this instance for the promise to stop terrorising - are themselves a form of terrorism and will always delay the arrival of true peace. Its withdrawal of the proposal to disarm is at once dangerous and helpful. Its danger lies in the threat to increase violent activity against people on this island and elsewhere. On the other hand it exposes clearly the fruitless dynamic of attempting to trade political power in return for the IRA stopping or reducing violence. I have learned never to concede to bullying, whether in the workplace, schoolyard or any area of society.
Neither should we do so as a society. It is now time for the bullying, the violence and the trade-offs to stop for good. - Yours, etc.,
NEIL PATRICK McCANN, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
Madam, - I share Eddie Holt's discomfort with Michael McDowell's recent description of Bobby Sands, on RTÉ's Questions and Answers, as a criminal (Weekend, January 22nd). It is likely that this was yet another case of Minister McDowell's tongue working faster than his mind.
It would have been appropriate, however, for the Minister to apply the term "criminal", in its moral and legal senses, to the shadowy group of individuals that orchestrated the campaign that resulted in the agonising death of Bobby Sands.
The sinister ability of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA to employ violence was reiterated during last week's Dáil proceedings.
The Taoiseach spoke of the cessation of Provisional IRA punishment beatings during inter-party negotiations, in order to avoid any damaging publicity for Sinn Féin negotiators, followed by the immediate resumption of this violence in the aftermath of those talks.
A 32-county socialist republic is the mission statement of this particular team. Yet they were no closer to realising their political objective at the time of the 1994 ceasefire than they had been in 1969.
Such an abject political failure came after this cabal had directed the killing of 1,700 people and the maiming of thousands more, in Britain and Ireland.
This wicked group claims it was excluded from attempts at a settlement prior to the Belfast Agreement, namely Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish Agreement; yet the recently published State Papers for 1974 remind us that it responded to the Sunningdale initiative (the first experiment in power-sharing in the North) by authorising an intensification in the levels of Provisional IRA violence. This barbaric strategy was designed to undermine the settlement.
It is assumed by most that several members of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA are also senior members of Sinn Féin. Indeed, the Tánaiste suggested recently that a sitting Sinn Féin TD may also a member of the Army Council. Such a heinous form of the dual mandate would be intolerable. One cannot be a criminal and a member of Dáil Éireann in our 21st-century parliamentary democracy - or am I just another naïve moderate?
A number of TDs have been rightly punished, in the recent past, for their failure to comply with ethics legislation. Surely, a TD's membership of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA would be more insidious than the ownership of offshore bank accounts or the failure to declare an interest in legislation relating to the pig industry? If so, what is Dáil Éireann doing to examine this particular possibility? If the opinion of a Garda superintendent is enough to convict a person suspected of membership of the Provisional IRA, could the Committee on Members' Interests not use similar evidence to suspend a member of Dáil Éireann from the House?
It is time for the democrats to strike back. - Yours, etc.,
P.J. O'MEARA, Cahir, Co Tipperary.
Madam, - Yet again we must endure the bleatings of the Sinn Féin leaders regarding respect for its "mandate". What mandate do members of its sister organisation have to engage in criminal activity? If, as they repeatedly insist, the IRA is a separate organisation, then even on the basis of Sinn Féin's flawed understanding of democratic politics, the IRA has no electoral mandate.
Gaining votes in an election, no matter how many, does not entitle one to behave as if one is above the law. If Sinn Féin wants to be treated like a democratic party, then it must behave like one. - Yours, etc.,
PETER FITZGERALD , Swords, Co Dublin.