Destruction Of Public Records

Sir, - Tom Garvin (July 11th), says that I "missed the point" of his own article (May 18th) on the destruction of the Public …

Sir, - Tom Garvin (July 11th), says that I "missed the point" of his own article (May 18th) on the destruction of the Public Records Office when the Four Courts was attacked in 1922. This destruction he called "the IRA's cultural murder", done knowingly and "with malicious intent".

I am sure that Prof Garvin is aware that there are several apparently authoritative, but nevertheless conflicting, accounts of how the explosion in question occurred, none (up to now, as far as I know) attributing it to a boobytrap - a specific tactical weapon.

Prof Garvin offers no proof for his reiterated statement that the garrison "engineered the destruction of the Public Records Office with malicious intent". If, in support of his theory, he does, as he suggests, possess reliable documentary evidence demonstrating unequivocally that the explosion resulted from a booby-trap deliberately planted to be detonated with the purpose of committing "cultural murder", to publish it would help avoid his points being missed.

Meantime I think I am correct in saying that the more established view is that the explosion was caused by a mine going off - either prematurely, as a result of local fire, or defensively - and detonating other munitions stored in the Public Records Office basement.

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The loss of the Public Records Office was a dreadful tragedy of war. It would have been infinitely preferable if neither it, nor the Civil War itself, had happened. Both are to be deplored. We might as well keep the record straight while doing so. - Yours, etc.,

Eoin Neeson, Blackrock, Co Dublin.