Sir, – Your report on Enda Kenny’s genetic make-up (Home News, June 24th) repeats uncritically what emerges as yet another exceptionally uncritical piece of work by geneticists who evidently have no understanding of historical questions, methods, and sources.
The starting point seems to have been that the population of Co Mayo has been genetically stable for more than 15 centuries! Why did the investigators think that King Niall had any connection with Mayo? Why did they think that Queen Meadhbh was a figure of history rather than myth? Where have they found a skeleton of a member of King Niall’s dynasty to provide a DNA sequence for comparison? From which planet will they beam down a shade of Meadhbh for interrogation? Why do we have to be assailed by such nonsense?
One might reasonably expect The Irish Times to have reporters with critical faculties suitably honed to provide a preliminary shakedown of the irrelevant waffle quoted from the project-leader: if An Taoiseach had made such claims about himself, the press would have treated him with derision. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DUMVILLE, Hon
MRIA,
Prof in History,
Palaeography & Celtic,
University of Aberdeen,
Scotland.