Sir, - Was I the only one-struck by an overwhelming, and irritating, sense of deja vu upon being exposed to your paper's annual Noel Browne hagiography (November 20th)? Please explain what leap in historical research or philosophical change merits yet another article on the good Doctor?
Noel Browne played a prominent, possibly decisive, role in the eradication of TB, for which we are properly grateful. Yet Deaglan de Breadun, in attempting to cast Dr Browne in his characteristic "prophet without honour" role, has on this occasion made himself, and Dr Browne, look more than a little foolish. Instead of sounding like a "small voice of social conscience", we heard confused ramblings from a critic of an Ireland long dead and surely, by now, mouldering in the grave.
The old grievance list was taken, out and dusted off. I could practically see their lips move in unison as they chanted the names of their enemies: the Church, the medical establishment, Sean MacBride and, naturally, Dev. So far, so what? But the dust must have got into their eyes. Neither of them sees anything wrong with the hysterically funny idea that "the arts have not crossed the Shannon The rest of the country has been looking on for years now, mouth agape, while Michael D. shovels money into any project in Galway that could qualify under the broadest definition of art.
Then Dr Browne turns to his only possible rival in the canon of Irish liberal saints, Mary Robinson. He cannot understand why she should give up her work at the coalface of social injustice for "an impotent titular post". In the very next paragraph the Presidency is dramatically elevated to a "fantastic honour", and one to which we get the distinct impression Dr Browne considers himself admirably qualified (those tiresome social obligations aside). Pausing only to note the Doctor's antipathy to Dick Spring and something called "the Common Market", de Breadun leaves us with Dr Browne in his tastefully renovated house, still at the centre of a storm.
Please believe that I wish Dr Browne and his wife tranquility and happiness in their retirement, but please, also, spare me any more fatuous post-mortems on controversies, or pseudo-controversies, that bear as much relevance to Ireland today as the Cattle Raid of Cooley. This article must signal the end of the long, long series: the same kicking of the same corpses, the same baddies, the same goody. - Yours, etc.,
Ennis Road, Limerick.