Sir, - I have ample tolerance towards Dick Walsh (March 29th) for calling me ". . . our longest winded politician . . .", although doing so on the same page as that on which Garret FitzGerald writes a weekly column does bring his accuracy, never mind his credibility, into issue. What is more difficult to take is his purported analysis of the Fianna Fail policy of "zero tolerance".
Employing the hop-skip and jump type logic much loved by the pub bore and chattering wiseacre. . ." on whom your columnist relies heavily in the course of his analysis, he links "zero tolerance" with class warfare, mob rule and Eamon Dunphy. Such hallucinogenic logic would be appealing if it were not for the fact that Mr Walsh holds himself out as a serious political commentator.
Had he set out to methodically analyse the policy, rather than to glibly denigrate it, he might have read what Fianna Fail said about "zero tolerance" in our policy paper, "Leading the Fight Against Crime". The type of knee-jerk nihilism espoused in the course of Mr Walsh's column as being the inseparable by-product of zero tolerance" has no foundation in the Fianna Fail document. No rational reading of the policy could lead any dispassionate observer to believe that it had.
I would not wish you to understand that I disagree with everything Mr Walsh has written. The sentiment expressed by him in his first paragraph: "One of the greatest nuisances of our time is the fellow who has picked up all the buzz words but only has the haziest idea of their meaning" is one I can readily endorse. It repeatedly came to mind as I read his column. - Yours etc
Dail Eireann,
Dublin 2.