Madam, - I wish to make two points regarding Jim Duffy's article in your edition of March 16th. Firstly, it is ironic to think that although Eamon de Valera unreservedly condemned the murder of Kevin O'Higgins in 1927, many of his Fianna Fáil colleagues such as Sean Lemass, Gerry Boland, Seán MacEntee and Frank Aiken would, less than a year later, unwittingly be among the mourners attending the funeral of one of his assassins. Indeed, MacEntee even went so far as to say that when Fianna Fáil came into power "the murder of Timothy Coughlan will not go unpunished".
When Timothy Coughlan was shot dead by Sean Harling in January 1928, nobody knew that he or his comrades, Bill Gannon and Archie Doyle, had been involved in the killing of O'Higgins. While one of the party's Dublin cumainn was named after him, Minister for Defence Desmond FitzGerald bitterly referred to Coughlan in the Dáil in 1929 as a "public hero of Fianna Fáil". Even when Terence de Vere White published his biography of O'Higgins in 1948, the identities of his killers remained a mystery. Their names were finally revealed in the 1986 edition of this book.
Secondly, the links between Fianna Fáil and the IRA continued long after the death of O'Higgins had forced their entry into Dáil Éireann. As Brian Hanley makes clear in his groundbreaking study The IRA 1926-1936, both organisations had close links before, during and after de Valera led his party into government in 1932. - Yours, etc,
FRANK BOUCHIER-HAYES, Gortboy, Co Limerick.