Sir, - Garret FitzGerald's column (The Irish Times, September 20th) dealt with the danger of electing a President who lacks political experience and he referred to Cearbhall O Dalaigh as being such a person. This broad assertion has been adequately refuted in an article by Mr Justice Hugh O'Flaherty (The Irish Times, September 26th).
However, the specific example of lack of political experience advanced by Garret FitzGerald referred to a visit by President O Dalaigh to the European Parliament in June 1975, when G.F. was the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The complaint would appear to be based largely on the fact that the President declined to make the kind of speech that the Department of Foreign Affairs would have liked him to make.
Garret FitzGerald goes on to describe the speech which the President is alleged to have made, which included quotations from a book about one M. Perrichon, and a conversation which he had with his dog, which included "repeated loud `woof-woofs' on the part of the dog". Garret FitzGerald describes the `utter humiliation of the Irish delegation" at the time, but in retrospect appeared to take considerable pleasure in ridiculing the President.
As I had some difficulty in accepting this description of the incident, I obtained a copy of the official report of the proceedings of the European Parliament on the occasion in question which contains the full speech made by the President. The speech does include an amusing, and very relevant, story about M. Perrichon, but does not contain any reference to his dog nor to the repeated `woof-woofs', loud or otherwise. - Yours, etc.,
Park Avenue, Dublin 4.