Madam, - I wonder if, amid all of the debate over the financial deal agreed between the Irish State and the Roman Catholic Church, any consideration has yet been given to the primary allegiances and motivations of those supposedly acting in the Irish public's best interests?
What prompts this question is my experience of Church-State relations during 12 years (1978-90) in the middle ranks of the Irish civil service. While employed in the Departments of the Public Service, Agriculture and Finance, I could not help but become aware of a number of Roman Catholic lay organisations active within the civil service, e.g. Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbanus, the Legion of Mary, St Vincent de Paul.
Some of these appeared harmless enough, organising Masses, retreats and outings. Others - and I am very conscious of the charge I am making here - were widely acknowledged to be attempting to interfere in the making and execution of public policy. They particularly "targeted" those departments responsible for social policy (e.g. contraception, divorce, abortion) such as Social Welfare, Health, Justice and of course Education.
I was personally invited, in my capacity as a civil servant, to join Opus Dei in early 1984 - they soon realised their mistake!
I also attended an official meeting in 1986 at which a senior official of the Department of the Taoiseach openly declared that he was a "Catholic first and foremost, a public servant thereafter".
As a Derry man raised in the Civil Rights era with John Hume as my history teacher, I was appalled and could imagine the furore if a civil servant of similar status in Northern Ireland were to declare "I am an Orangeman first and foremost ..." Nevertheless, this man's civil service audience seemed to approve of his stance.
Of course, those bad old days are long gone and the 21st century, post-Good Friday Agreement Irish State would surely have no truck with such carry on. Nevertheless, it might be no harm if senior public servants were required to make a declaration of interests recording their membership of listed organisations so that the taxpayer might be in absolutely no doubt about which piper is calling the tune. - Yours, etc.,
NIGEL P. COOKE, River View, Liverpool, England.