Madam, - John Waters's column, "Presumed guilty of xenophobia" (Opinion, June 14th), managed to be both disingenuous and patronising.
He seems to presume much of the Irish electorate to be either too thick to share his grand vision of a multicultural Ireland or to be xenophobes who ignore their own history. This does a great disservice to both the Irish people and to the democratic process.
The fact remains that Irish immigration policy is a shambles. It is both legitimate and proper to ask the question: "How many are too many?" It is legitimate and proper to question the motives of people who see Ireland as merely a stepping stone to a passport to reside in the EU.
It is also legitimate to ask whether or not the country can sustain the numbers of immigrants entering the country both economically and culturally. It is intellectually untenable for Mr Waters, and indeed your newspaper, to dismiss people who raise these concerns as xenophobes.
Voters have made it abundantly clear that they want these issues discussed and that we will no longer accept self-appointed intellectual élites talking down to people or dismissing them by calling them racists. The role of the Government is to protect its citizens and work in their best interests. The citizens of Ireland want real and substantive change to Irish immigration policy and no amount of name-calling or guilt-mongering will change that indisputable and legitimate goal. - Yours, etc.,
DONAL O'BRIEN,
Dunseverick Road,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Madam, - It saddens me greatly to find my beliefs at odds with such a large proportion of the population. In acting so hastily to prevent others claiming the right to be considered Irish, I feel we have irretrievably lost something of what that means. Instead of encouraging informed debate on all aspects of immigration, we have chosen to act without generosity, to jealously guard what is our own. In doing so we have abdicated the responsibilities of our own history. We have ignored our own emigrant past and denied any bond with countries that now suffer the hardship that we once did.
We made an assertion last Friday; we chose to define ourselves as a wealthy nation which must protect itself from those who are less fortunate.
We are not citizens of the world who remember our own economic despair. We are not Ireland of the Welcomes. - Yours, etc.,
CONN HOLOHAN,
Millview Lawns,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.