Madam, - What a group of hypocrites are the Green Party: its millionaire environmental spokesman is a significant shareholder in at least six anti-environmental companies and only owns up when found out.
He tells us he had to move house and had a baby, so didn't note the details of his $1.5 million inheritance. Wow! People move houses and have babies all the time but manage to get on with their lives - and few would overlook even a $500 inheritance.
To compound the Greens' hypocrisy, Chief Sargent states he himself is philosophical, while Representative Gormley says Mr Cuffe must sell because "it looks bad for the party". Wow!
These self-righteous officials should ponder the Italian writer Ignace Serzone's Bread and Wine, written in 1937: "What would happen if man remained loyal to the ideals of their youth?"
I can't believe that in the misguided ideals of my own earlier years I once voted Green. What a fool I was. Nowadays I accept the simple unenquiring philosophy of my children: "Whatever the Greens or the IRA or Sinn Féin propose, whether it be about Nice or Shannon or the environment or poverty or whatever, vote against them."
Like 70 per cent of the Irish voters who don't understand the issues, my children's simplification will be good enough for me in the future.
Mr Cuffe should resign from his party. Perhaps he should give one or two of his millions to those most damaged by his anti-environmental investments. Perhaps he could donate to the ill- equipped and poor schools and hospitals of those children in areas of the Third World which the multinational Sara Lee abuses and underpays.
After all he is a Sara Lee shareholder, profiting from its greed and exploitation. - Yours, etc.,
CARMEL CASSIDY,
Carnalurgan,
Westport,
Co Mayo.