Madam, - At least three Government Ministers - Dermot Ahern, Willie O'Dea and Martin Cullen (The Irish Times, October 13th) have now assured us there is no evidence of aircraft being used for illegal activity at Shannon Airport.
My difficulty is that, as I understand it, gardaí and other security personnel are under instruction not to search US military-controlled aircraft at Shannon. How, then, can there be evidence, either of illegal abductions, or of internationally outlawed munitions, until gardaí are allowed to do their job of checking for lawbreaking and protecting the public at Shannon? - Yours, etc.,
COLM RODDY,
Bayside Walk,
Dublin 13.
Madam, - "Let's keep this in context. These are simply planes landing in Shannon, refuelling and moving on." So says Martin Cullen, Minister for Transport (The Irish Times, October 19th), referring to the ever-increasing number of US troops passing through our country on their way to perpetrate more murder and mayhem in Iraq. Somewhere in German railway stations in the mid-1940s officials must have signed transport manifests for the carriage of Zyklon B cylinders with similar words: "These are simply gas cylinders transiting through this station before being moved on."
If Mr. Cullen at least had the honesty to say he supported the American presence in Iraq, or even that he wanted the money irrespective of the blood in which it was soaked, that would already be obscene but we would know where we stood. But to dismiss these merchants of death, even if many of them are themselves young and naïve subjects of an increasingly militarised and brutal administration, as just passing through, is to play with words and to deform the English language. If he speaks for us we all have blood on our hands. He doesn't speak for me. We don't need blood money that badly.
Fianna Fáil used to be the party of principled neutrality. I am sorry that it seems to have become the party of unprincipled opportunism. Mr Cullen, who has himself changed party when it suited his interests, embodies the new ethos perfectly. - Yours, etc.,
PIARAS MAC ÉINRÍ,
Model Farm Road,
Cork.