Madam, - The question being asked is: could Sinn Féin can be trusted in Government? I can think of one important reason why the answer remains a firm No and will do so for a long time to come.
It has to do with members of Sinn Féin themselves. Take Ms M.L. McDonald - good-looking, articulate and competent. If she were primarily concerned with equality and wealth redistribution, as she now contends, she could have joined any number of parties - the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers' Party or even the Communist Party. If her main concern was Irish unification, she could have remained within Fianna Fáil. However, she choose - as did all the other current crop of Sinn Féin politicians - to join the only nationalist party in Ireland inextricably linked with a movement committed to violence as a means of achieving their ends. They have demonstrated absolutely no evidence of a Pauline conversion on the road to Stormont - just a cynical, tactical change in direction. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr JIM O'LEARY
(Fine Gael),
County Hall,
Dun Laoghaire.