Madam, - Conflict resolution, we are told, demands imagination and flexibility. When met with inevitable moral compromise, the last thing the good citizen should do is react like a virgin who is suddenly confronted by a man in a filthy trench coat. For all the earthy good sense in these injunctions, I could barely suppress a shudder as the Taoiseach announced his capitulation to Provisional Sinn Féin over the Jerry McCabe murderers.
His in-tray on this matter must be bloated indeed at this point, so he can be spared the preliminary treatment. Why bother to remind him that a gentleman always conveys bad news in person and doesn't let a helpless widow hear bad tidings on the radio? It would also be a waste of time to reiterate the fact that Garda McCabe was killed in a robbery worthy of a gang of Capone's footpads; still more futile to tell him that only a moral cretin could believe that knocking off a rural post office could in any conceivable way be rationalised as a defence of Northern Ireland's Catholics, a contribution towards the building of an "Ireland of equals", or a necessary step towards the achievement of "national self-determination".
No doubt, he would also resent being told again that the High and Supreme Courts gave him an unimpeachable excuse for refusing all requests on this one should he have wished to avail of it.
The Taoiseach knows all this. He pleads that his decision is based on Mr Adams's solemn warning that he cannot induce the PIRA's Army Council to disband without this concession.
The Taoiseach would hardly thank me for reminding him that Mr Adams needs to be treated with tongs when he plays the "split in the Army Council" card. He has extensive form on this one. Between 1989 and 1997, Adams demanded everything from the abandonment of the Anglo-Irish Agreement to a time-scale for Irish unity and direct British pressure for unity as the price of a successful "Army Council" vote. Four Irish Taoisigh declined to take this tomfoolery seriously and the sky didn't fall.
Still later, during 1998 Adams demanded a ludicrously elaborate "Strand Two" as his price for co-opting his colleagues into the embryonic deal. Mr Ahern famously changed his mind about the North-South bodies during Holy Week and Adams signed up anyway.
For myself, the content of the Taoiseach's decision was rendered all the more noxious by the infantile tone he used when communicating it. His cranky Dáil explanation teetered crassly between force majeure and realpolitik. He would have us believe that nothing short of another raft of concessions will clinch the deal on guns. I'd like to suggest several other strategies open to him that might have the desired pedagogical effect on Mr Adams et al., short of releasing the McCabe killers.
The Taoiseach could threaten to disseminate some of Provisional Sinn Féin's lesser known ideas, such as its continued insistence that the May 1998 referendums do not constitute a full, final and legitimate exercise in national self-determination, or the belief of the "Army Council" that it alone constitutes the sole military and legal authority on this island.
Should this fail to move PIRA, the Taoiseach might then start reminding Irish America of Sinn Féin/PIRA's links with international headbangers as diverse as Castro, Gadafy, ETA, FARC, the Puerto Rican FALN and Mancheros and the Turkish DHKP-C.
Failing all of this he might start talking very loudly about Deputy Ó Snodaigh's friends and their open contempt for the Irish Constitution.
In short, instead of pleading no contest, Mr Ahern might do the one thing that freely elected prime ministers do better than anybody else: he might stand his ground against organised fascism. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN-PAUL McCARTHY,
Hollymount Estate,
Blarney Road,
Cork City.
Madam, - I was reminded of Caesar's wife after reading Mark Hennessy's report in Saturday's edition headlined "Tánaiste backs Ahern on release of McCabe killers".
Her proferred sympathy to Mrs McCabe and Ben O'Sullivan and her promise to speak to them before any decision is taken are quite frankly hypocritical, given that both herself and the Taoiseach are now engaged in political spin of the type best reserved for the parish pump. Mrs McCabe knows this and so do we. The Government of which Ahern and Harney are the leaders gave Mrs McCabe a written guarantee that the murderers of her husband would serve their full sentences. They did so in the full knowledge that his murder had nothing to with paramilitarism.
After the murder Sinn Féin leaders denied that the murderers were even members of Sinn Féin/IRA. But because they now have the power to influence high-level decision-making in this country and are intent on using it, they demand the release of the murderers of a member of our police force, convicted after we voted in a referendum for the Good Friday Agreement. In doing so they demonstrate the type of blackmail that only Sinn Féin is capable of and only our current Government is incapable of resisting.
After we have given in on this, how long will we wait until Aengus Ó Snodaigh, TD, demands the release of his friend who was recently convicted of IRA membership? And Tánaiste, the sensitivity of this case for the Progressive Democrats in Limerick East casts a long shadow over the founder of your party's fearlessness in his "stand by the Republic" speech.
Why not have the guts to tell Sinn Féin enough is enough? - Yours, etc.,
LOUIS CARROLL,
The Grove,
Celbridge,
Co Kildare.
Madam, - I really hope I am wrong, but my trust in the Government has waned to such an extent that I cannot help but feel that the Taoiseach's negotiations with the IRA to free the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe are designed to keep Sinn Féin onside should the party be needed to form a coalition after the next general election. - Yours, etc.,
DENIS HURLEY,
Kilbrittain,
Co Cork.
Madam, - I would like to believe that when the people of this Republic and of Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Good Friday agreement, this was based on an informed opinion. Hence, we all knew that the Agreement would see people who had committed some terrible crimes released from prison - people who murdered police officers, prison officers, soldiers, nationalists, loyalists. Sometimes the victims were just people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Irrespective of allegiance, each loss has been a life-long sentence for a grieving family.
I find so much of the comment on this matter hypocritical. It is characterised by an attitude that tells the good people of Northern Ireland that they must accept things that are not acceptable to us, whether it be having Sinn Féin in government or releasing people who have killed police officers. We find it so easy to make special cases, but what about the families of those of all shades who died in Northern Ireland? When we seek to make distinctions, it is one more blow for those families as they see in those distinctions the message that their loss is a lesser one. This issue is not about any one case, any one death or any one prisoner. It is about a policy decision taken as part of effort to rebuild a broken community.
Much is made of the letter written by John O'Donoghue and the promise contained therein. This Government has proven time and time again that a "promise" is no more than a thought at a particular moment in time, whether uttered at the UN, at a teacher's conference, in an election manifesto or, as in this case, in a letter. One has to believe that Mr O'Donoghue knew then that this was not something he could ever adhere to and that, ultimately, the decision would be out of the hands of the Minister of the day. - Yours, etc.,
T. GERARD BENNETT,
Templeroan Park,
Dublin 16.