Madam, - During the entire period of the "peace process" since the Good Friday Agreement the Irish nation has adopted a blinkered view of the activities of Sinn Féin.
The cathartic effects of the McCartney murder have, one hopes, pulled the blinkers from all our eyes. We must collectively share the blame for 80 years of doublethink which allowed the monster of terrorism, in the guise of nationalism, to grow and to commit atrocity after atrocity in our name.
This doublethink allowed us for too long to accept that Sinn Féin and the IRA were different organisations; it left us comfortable with the concept of TUAS (tactical use of the armed struggle); it allowed the "sneaking regarders" to buy the Easter lily and to sing "rebel" songs; it allowed ruthless terrorists to be popularised in song as "freedom fighters".
An organisation that refuses to accept that the murders of Jean McConville and Jerry McCabe were crimes; that denies its involvement in daily kneecapping, cigarette-smuggling, diesel-smuggling and protection rackets cannot be trusted and does not deserve the trust of the people.
There can be no more equivocation concerning terrorists in this country. That especially means that there must be a sea change in attitudes which up to now have provided a fertile recruiting ground for the godfathers of death. There can be no further equivocation with regard to "military" and "political" wings of terrorist organisations; Provisional IRA is Sinn Féin and the Real IRA is the 32-County Sovereignty Committee.
The Government should move swiftly to take Irish passports from those who would use them to travel and receive funding with which to buy arms.
It is time to hit the godfathers of death with the full panoply of deterrents which can be mustered by a democratic state against those who undermine it. - Yours, etc.,
MATT REVILLE, Coolamber Park, Dublin 16.
Madam, - The brutal killing of Robert McCartney in Belfast recently must be condemned unequivocally by all right-thinking people. It is to be hoped that those responsible will be made accountable under the law, thereby bringing some sort of closure to the bereaved family. Mr McCartney's family are to be commended for the most dignified manner in which they are seeking justice.
The killing of Mr McCartney has led to unprecedented demands for those responsible to be brought to justice. These demands are coming from Irish and British politicians and media, and from others with vested interests.
If these demands for justice are not to be seen as a cynical exercise in political opportunism, having more to do with the political demise of Sinn Féin than securing justice for the McCartney family, then equal demands for justice must be made for the bereaved families of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
The body working on behalf of the victims of these bombings, Justice for the Forgotten, along with the families of the murdered human rights lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, despite judicial inquiries, have been frustrated in their quest for justice by the continued refusal of the British authorities to be more compliant in providing relevant documentation to these inquiries.
Let us hope that those who are loudest in their demands for justice for the McCartney family are equally vociferous in their demands for justice for the forgotten. - Yours, etc.,
TOM COOPER, Delaford Lawn, Dublin 16.
Madam, - Regarding the Taoiseach's assertion that the leadership of Sinn Féin knew about the planned Northern Bank robbery, the president of the Irish National Caucus in the US, Fr Sean McManus, asks: "What right, legally and morally, does [ Bertie Ahern] have to dispense himself from the absolute principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty" (Letters, February 25th).
Mr Ahern did not dispense himself from that principle. Fr McManus omitted the vital phrase "in the eyes of the law". Leaving aside Fr McManus's false implication that simply to know about a planned crime and do nothing about it is to be a co-conspirator to that crime, there is no legal, let alone moral, conflict involved in holding or expressing the view that a person not convicted of a crime committed that crime. This holds true even after a person has been tried and acquitted.
The criminal law applies the strict standard of proof beyond all reasonable doubt not for the purpose of protecting an accused person's reputation, but to avoid the mischief of a possibly innocent person being punished for a crime he or she did not commit. It is emphatically not intended to be a means of stifling informed opinion, debate and the search for truth and justice, and any attempt to use it as such is spurious.
The answer therefore to Fr McManus's question, rhetorical thought it may be, is that Mr Ahern has an inalienable constitutional right, and a moral right, to hold and to express the view that the Sinn Féin leadership knew about the planned Northern Bank robbery. - Yours, etc.,
PETER DUFF, Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin.