Sir, - With reference to his assertion (An Irishman's Diary, August 22nd) that Dev was the only man who knew how to stand up to the IRA, Kevin Myers hasdecided to forget that the same Dev set a precedent for the rejection of the will of the Irish people in favour of Republican violence in 1922, and it can be argued that many of the Provos took their lead from this stand and from fascist remarks he made at the time, such as: "The majority have no right to do wrong."
Furthermore, considering that Mr Myers has constantly rubbished the peace process, I consider the contributions in both his articles of the past week on the subject, to be more like insensitive gloating rather than the sounds of a man wishing to engender peace. The measures that he is stridently demanding should have been in place for the past 30 years and were, as he knows, indeed implemented across the Border in the 1970s. These, as he also knows, were extremely counter-productive and strengthened the IRA. So whose side is Kevin Myers on? And would he not agree that reactive hot-headedness is the very energy that fuels the evil he claims to abhor? - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Murphy,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.