Sir, - Jackie Healy-Rae seems certain that asylum-seekers have nothing on their minds, morning, noon, and night, but how to milk money from the Irish state. It is unlikely that he has met even one of these people, but he is certain he knows what is in their minds. His vehemence and certainty are the clue that something deep is at work in his fevered imagination. Could it be that mechanism, so well-known to psychoanalysis, of "projection"? This is where the accuser projects his more motives on to another person or group.
Before one of his followers dashes off a reply about well-heeled city people being prejudiced against poor, unsophisticated country folk, my own father was from Kerry. No man could be further removed from the bogus blarney and bluster of Jackie Healy-Rae. Were he alive, he would be embarrassed by Mr Healy-Rae's play-acting and bigotry, as I suspect are most people in Kerry. - Yours, etc.,
Tim O'Halloran, Ferndale Road, Finglas, Dublin 11.