Madam, - Is it appropriate and honourable that the leader of the Opposition should choose to launch so extreme an attack on a Taoiseach who is in a different continent to develop trade relations and to visit Irish Aid-funded development projects (The Irish Times, January 14th)?
For the sake of the office, the country, and Irish democracy, attacks of such extremity on a Taoiseach - however justified - should be made not only in appropriate settings (the Dáil, or, say, an election leaders' debate), but most certainly only when the Taoiseach's feet are on Irish soil.
This sorry attempt at transcontinental Taoiseach-scalping serves to emphasise one sorry fact: the leader of the Opposition's apparent lack of political virility. Because of this, and despite all of the favourable circumstances his party had going for it during last year's election, Fine Gael, however inflated, remains in opposition.
Mr Kenny spoke about at the weekend the demeaning of politics. How apt. How much more respect we would all have for the political process if we had a leader of the Opposition who had the political manhood to deal with a suspect Taoiseach eyeball to eyeball rather than starting a melee across more than 10,000 kilometers of land and ocean. - Yours, etc,
ANDREW GREANEY, Clontarf, Dublin 3.