Madam, - I always suspected a close link between Fianna Fáil and the GAA, but after hearing of Bertie's nominees to the Seanad I'm convinced of it. Beaten twice? Don't worry, you're still in the qualifiers! Failed to get elected to the Dáil or Seanad? Don't worry, you're still selected for the Upper House! - Yours, etc,
ÁINNLE O'NEILL, Osprey Drive, Dublin 6W.
Madam, - In the past 40 years Eoghan Harris has exhibited more ideological twists and turns than one could care to imagine, but he has defended each of his political incarnations with great passion and overwhelming self-belief. As a member of the Workers' Party, he supported the Stalinist "workers' democracies" in Eastern Europe and his party supported the Soviet Union's "liberation" of Afghanistan in 1979. In RTÉ he was liable to accuse anyone who was even mildly nationalist or who disagreed with Section 31 as being a fellow-traveller of the Provisional IRA.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the world of many a Stalinist collapsed, but not that of Mr Harris. He soon reinvented himself as an adviser to, in quick succession, the Labour Party, Fine Gael and David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party.
Recently he has metamorphosed into a vocal supporter of Fianna Fáil and Bertie Ahern as well as being a zealous recruit to the war on terror as espoused by George Bush and Tony Blair. Now that he has been rewarded for his timely pre-election intervention in support of the Taoiseach on the Late Late Show, the ordinary citizen of the State will, for the next five years, have the pleasure of regularly watching, listening to and paying the salary of Mr Harris as he embarks upon his future ideological mutations in the Seanad and tells us how he has always been right while the rest of us have been wrong all this time. - Yours, etc,
DAVID DOYLE, Gilford Park, Sandymount, Dublin 4.
Madam, - Now that Eoghan Harris has been appointed to Seanad Éireann, I presume the seating arrangements will be changed to allow the inclusion of a very large swivel chair. - Yours, etc,
ALAN McPARTLAND, Grange Court, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.