Sir, - I write in support of John Bruton ("Democracy can't ignore illegal arms", Opinion, August 16th). The decommissioning of IRA and other paramilitary arms is an issue of fundamental importance for the future of this State.
It is not just the peace in Northern Ireland that is threatened by the continued existence of private armies, but the constitutionality and democracy of the Irish Republic. I can think of nothing more destabilising of Irish democracy than the rise to power of a political party with the continuing means and threat of armed violence at its disposal.
Unless and until the IRA disarms, Sinn FΘin will continue to represent a potentially dire threat to Irish democracy. The alternative, as John Bruton suggests, is for Sinn FΘin to follow the historical precedent of its predecessors in the republican movement - to sever its links with the IRA and thereby make a decisive, incontrovertible and permanent break with violence and paramilitarism. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Geoffrey Roberts, Department of History, University College Cork.