Sir, - I read with interest the Irishman's Diary of Thursday, June 6th. It was, as usual with your diarist Kevin Myers, vaguely amusing, as he certainly has a talent for sloshing around verbiage from a highly coloured palette. However, to my disappointment, I failed to detect the presence of a single argument in the entire piece, Mr Myers preferring to rely entirely on abuse.
There is apparently no point in discussing the issue of neutrality, as it has "become no more than a holiness competition" and, according to Mr Myers, there is little value in "competing in a mumbo-jumbo argument" in any case "because they don't need to make sense".
One might ask who are "they"? Well, from St Kevin's perspective they are "the various liberal neutralist commentators" who have loaded the rest of us with "sanctimonious neutralist baggage" as a result of which we have become "delirious from overdoses of intravenous piety". They are also "tree-hugging greens and kneecapping greens" who promote "poppycock" and "spout bilge".
Naturally enough they are "reactionaries". Naturally also they are wickedly critical of the "evils of US imperialism" and actually dare to carp at Margaret Thatcher.
Now I have never hugged a tree or capped a knee in my life. But I reserve the right to criticise Mrs Thatcher who was responsible for an act of merciless piracy in the sinking of the Belgrano together with its complement of teenage conscripts who had been pressed into service by her erstwhile pal, the dictator Galtieri. As for US imperialism, are we supposed to turn a blind eye to the criminal bombing raids against neutral Kampuchea during the Vietnam War in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent civilians of a neutral country were murdered by the US air force, or indeed the deliberate overthrow of democratic government in Chile in the interests of American big business?
I would myself be sorry if the Nice Treaty were not passed in an new referendum, as I am fully in support of the enlargement of the community. But passed it will not be unless the Government includes in our accession something close to the Danish protocol. This was gained by the Danes government and appended to their accession treaty even though they are members of NATO. It would have the effect of legally guaranteeing our right to decide ourselves on the question of neutrality. The Taoiseach's attempt to mislead the Irish people by the production of a completely meaningless and ineffective "declaration" which has no legal force whatever is unlikely to fool anybody - even sanctimonious and hypocritical tree-huggers.
In the circumstances I can do no other than welcome the fact that in his intemperate article Mr Myers has demonstrated the weakness of his own and the Government's position more effectively than I could ever have done. - Yours, etc.,
Senator DAVID NORRIS,
Seanad Eireann,
Dublin 2.