Madam, - Jim Heron (July 24th) and Deirdre Ní Mhordha (July 27) are both certain that the recent citizenship referendum was racist.
One of their reasons for this belief is that support for the referendum result was expressed by David Duke and Eugene Terreblanche, and this has somehow cast all Irish people as racists.
Both Mr Heron and Ms Ni Mhordha are making the same error: they are assuming that correlation is causation. Duke and Terreblanche, who are racists, applauded the referendum result. But this does not mean that the Minister is a racist or that his proposal was racist. The same logic would lead us to believe that people who support the trains running on time are supporters of Mussolini. Again, correlation, but no causation.
The people who supported the referendum were not racist, nor were they hoodwinked into voting for a racist proposal. They did so to prevent an abuse of our laws which could have led to genuine asylum-seekers being branded as citizenship tourists and spongers, a situation which most Irish people would find abhorrent.
Finally, to say that we are now associated with the worst elements of humankind and that Hitler would be proud of us is a gross affront to the majority of Irish people and serves only to highlight the paucity of reasoned argument by those who campaigned for a No vote. - Yours, etc.,
TREVOR TROY, Athboy, Co Meath.
Madam, - In response to Deirdre Ní Mhordha (July 27th), the KKK and other hate groups have the electorate of this country to praise. The referendum on citizenship was passed by an overwhelming majority.
Mr. McDowell does not have the power to change the Constitution of the Republic. Please put the blame where it belongs. - Yours, etc.,
DEAN HICKEY, Waterloo Road, Dublin 4.
Madam, - The Minister for Justice, Mr Michael McDowell, at the MacGill Summer School, put forward the merits of the political model of a republic (The Irish Times, July 24th). He voiced the view that a republic was a society where citizens stood equally in the eyes of the law, and where the only "ruler" was the law.
This perspective runs directly opposite to the actions of this same Minister, in the issuing of many deportation orders last week to parents of citizens of this State.
This is the same Minister who promised in the aftermath of the recent referendum, (as reported in The Irish Times on June 14th) that he would work to regularise the situations of families of Irish-born children who had been in legal limbo since the L and O Supreme Court decision.
It is quite disgraceful for this Minister of Justice to issue deportation orders at a time when the Dáil is not in session, when the courts are in recess and where access to legal help and advice is denied to families of citizens of this State. - Yours, etc.,
ANDREW COLEMAN, Hill View, Bandon, Co Cork.