Madam, - In 1916 the Proclamation of the Republic was issued in the name of the Provisional Government. The President of that government was the leader of its armed force, the Irish Volunteers.
In 1919-1920 IRA members swore an oath of allegiance to Dáil Éireann and the Irish Republic. They were nominally under the control of the Dáil and its Minister for Defence. They were ultimately answerable to the President. In fact, they were more fully under the control of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the person of Michael Collins.
During the Civil War, the anti-Treaty IRA was responsible to its Army Council and the Army Council was, somewhat nominally, answerable to the President of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republic.
There are many ways in which a person could be in control of the IRA without actually being a member of it. To ask repeatedly if someone was a member of the IRA is a sterile exercise, when there are so many other ways in which that person could have exercised control over the IRA's activities yet still truthfully deny membership.
Perhaps it is time to start asking the right questions, rather than keep repeating the same old wrong ones. - Yours, etc.,
ALAN DOYLE, Islandbridge, Dublin 8.