Sir, - The core idea of the 1916 Proclamation was, as David Andrews points out (Andrews on Saturday, March 17th), Ireland's national right to self-determination. He goes on to tell us that the British government has now come to recognise that right, but subject to "the important qualification" that its exercise "is qualified by Unionist consent". It is not inalienable and absolute.
That "important qualification" is also acknowledged by the Irish Government, and by the vast majority of the people who voted for the Good Friday Agreement. It seems a pity that Mr Andrews did not refer to this official reneging on the core idea of the Proclamation.
However, there is no need for the Government, or Fianna Fail, or any of us to be ashamed about that reneging. The justification for it, paradoxically, is inherent in the "cherishing" section of the Proclamation itself. In combining the resolve to cherish "all the children of the nation equally", with the resolve to be "oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government which have divided a minority from the majority in the past". Pearse, in writing the Proclamation, was, in effect, establishing as de jure the all-embracing nationality which had been preached by Thomas Davis, whom, shortly before that, he had named as one of the four fathers of Irish nationality.
The unionist/loyalist veto/ consent to national self-determination provides the only means through which nationalists and republicans can set about building the "internal union" which Davis saw as the means to "external independence". - Yours, etc.,
James Mcgeever, Dublin Road, Kingscourt, Co Cavan.