Madam, - Garret FitzGerald's column of July 29th on community control schemes - sorry, community restorative justice schemes - brings to mind a conversation with a clergyman in Belfast about two years ago.
The clergyman had helped a nationalist youth find refuge after a severe beating at the hands of republican vigilantes in West Belfast. After a period of exile, the young man was given word that it was safe for him to return to his home, on condition that he reported to the local CRJ scheme.
When he entered the CRJ office, the first face he noticed was that of the leader of the vigilante group. He turned on his heel and fled.
Perhaps this was an isolated incident. Or perhaps not. Sinn Féin and the IRA helped spawn the CRJ initiatives, in part as an alternative to policing. The track record is instructive: the movement has shot, beaten and mutilated more than 2,600 members of the Northern nationalist community, many of them children, in so-called "punishment" attacks since 1973. It would require an extraordinary act of faith to believe that this culture of violence has simply evaporated.
Even more extraordinary is the notion that former paramilitaries, steeped in a tradition of violence, are the ones to dispense justice in Catholic, working-class areas in the North.
To provide state funding for such schemes not only beggars belief; it is political irresponsibility of an unforgivable kind. - Yours, etc,
LIAM KENNEDY, Rugby Road, Belfast 7.