Madam, – Seán Donlon, former Irish ambassador to Washington (1978-1981) charges, allegedly quoting a Martha Crenshaw that, “. . . sizable funds for the IRA and the INLA came from the Irish-American community channelled through . . . the INC”(“Haughey bid to tighten grip on Northern policy derailed”. July 28th).
That is absolutely false. The INC never channelled one cent to the IRA, nor indeed to any other group or entity in Ireland, north or south, for whatever reason. Period.
Mr Donlon rehashes a revisionism account of a sad period when Irish-Americans were at loggerheads with the Irish Embassy. The following anecdote aptly captures the Donlon-era: In the early 1990s I was at an Irish function in Washington. A group of us were standing talking. I was criticising the Dublin government. A person at the edge of the group, whom I didn’t know, suddenly shouted out, “Father Mc Manus, there are no more Seán Donlons at the Irish Embassy.” The defensive voice belonged to an Irish Embassy official.
Since Albert Reynolds, God bless him, swung the support of the Irish government behind the Irish peace-process, Irish-Americans have been able to appreciate and respect the important work of the Irish Embassy.
They could never understand “Donlanism”. Irish-Americans cannot emotionally identify with a 26-county State or a mini-six-county one. No matter how much they support the Belfast Agreement, as I do, at heart and at their best, Irish-Americans fully endorse my paraphrasing of the Pledge of Allegiance, which I have preached all across the United States since I came in 1972: “I believe that Ireland, too, has the right to be one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.
Amen to that. And amen to the fact there are no more Seán Donlons at the Irish Embassy. – Yours, etc,
Fr SEAN Mc MANUS,
President,
Irish National Caucus,
Capitol Hill,
Washington DC,
US.