Madam, - I note that Michael McDowell revealed to Chuck Feeney that Frank Connolly was in a group called "Revolutionary Struggle" in his youth.
Has the Minister plans to continue in this vein, revealing to selected individuals intelligence tittle-tattle contained in mouldering Special Branch files?
What members of the Oireachtas, the judiciary, the Civil Service, the trade unions, academia and business are currently quaking in their shoes at the thought of the Minister carefully sifting through the files to discover what they were up to as students?
Is any formerly revolting student safe from this revolting Minister?
The Minister ensured through legislation passed this year a right to peruse any Garda file on any individual. Now we know why.
Let us not be parochial, there is a potential European dimension. José Manuel Barosso, president of the European Commission, was a Maoist in his foolish youth.
Mr McDowell could propose extending his surveillance of the past to the continent. There is a world to be won and careers are out there to be ruined. - Yours, etc,
NIALL MEEHAN,
Offaly Road,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.
Madam, - The Irishman's Diary from Kevin Myers yesterday (Dec 15th), was without question the finest he has ever penned. And one of the finest, if not the finest, in the history of that distinguished column.
I cut it out for future generations, as the old line of Edmund Burke still rings true, about all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Irish journalism has certainly got a good guy there, and a moral benchmark for journalists in future, both on the Connolly saga, and the whole future monitoring of the monitors.
If "who will police the police?" is always a vital question, no less is "who will report on the reporters?", and we have had too little of that until now.
Let's hear it for genuine across-the-board "openness, transparency, and accountability". - Yours, etc,
TOM CAREW,
Merton Drive,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.