Sir, - Just as people felt they had had a much needed rest from Mr Myers, we read his truly extraordinary account of the life of de Valera.
Your diarist has invented an evil Wizard of Oz figure who, by the power of his myth-making, enslaved generations of Irish men and women. Was it his arcane powers, or the innate gullibility of the Irish people that led him to win and hold power again and again in elections? No. Mr de Valera spoke for the majority of Irish people at a very different time than this.
It was a time when children suffered. Children are suffering today, however. If Mr Myers would look on the streets of Dublin late at night he would see children whose health and well-being are being sacrificed to free enterprise and individualism as brutally as they were ever sacrificed to the economics of self-sufficiency and the culture of deference. The silence and the hypocrisy are much the same, however.
If Mr Myers gave some of his energy to the present evils, his sincerity in denouncing the past would be less suspect. His tone would sound better if he spoke for a society which had controlled these evils, rather than merely changing their names. - Yours, etc.,
Frank Fitzpatrick, Dunville Avenue, Dublin 6.