Sir, - Paul Cullen (The Irish Times, May 22nd) referred to a submission made by our organisation to the Ireland Aid Review. Neither in the headline "Democracy `is being subverted by State funds for anti-racism' ", nor in the first part of the article could I recognise our submission.
We did not object in principle to State funds for anti-racism, although we did say it was the brief of the NCCRI under the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform and not the brief of the Department of Foreign affairs. The word "anti-racism" was used once in a four-page submission.
The entire thrust of our submission was that the National Committee for Development Education was more and more frequently giving grants, not for what Irish citizens would consider development education, but for pushing a very soft asylum agenda and a very open immigration policy. We do not see how Irish taxpayers can have "ownership" of Ireland Aid when it used taxpayers' money to push one side of a divisive domestic political agenda. - Yours, etc.,
Aine Ni Chonaill, PRO, Immigration Control Platform, PO Box 6469, Dublin 2.