FRANK BOUCHIER-HAYES,
Sir, - Exactly 75 years ago, on July 10th 1927, Kevin O'Higgins, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Minister for Justice and External Affairs, was brutally gunned down by members of the IRA as he walked to Sunday Mass.
Mr Michael McDowell would do well to reflect on the tribute paid to O'Higgins by President W.T. Cosgrave in the Dáil two days later:
"If it be true that the prestige and credit of a country depend more upon its administration of justice than upon any other single test, then what does not this country owe to the Minister for Justice, with its courts enjoying the confidence of all the citizens, its unarmed gardaí respected throughout the land, the whole administration of law functioning without reproach?"
Major Bryan Cooper's contribution echoed statements made of other Irish statesmen who had also paid the ultimate price for their devotion to democracy: "Kevin O'Higgins will not have lived and died in vain if we all strive, each of us, to fill a little part of the gap that his death has caused, each in our own way, moving perhaps by different roads, but moving in the direction he desired - the direction of peace, order, security and the prosperity of Ireland."
Finally, in a year which also marks the 80th anniversary of the deaths of such remarkable Irishmen as Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Cathal Brugha and Harry Boland, we would all do well to reflect on the words chosen by W.T. Cosgrave to try to make some sense of the tragedy that had befallen the Irish nation on that day:
"It has been the fate of this country, perhaps more than others, to see torn from her ruthlessly devoted sons of great achievement and greater promise while the flowers of their service were yet hardly unfolded." - Yours, etc,
Frank Bouchier-Hayes,
Newcastle West,
Co Limerick.