Sir, - The Robinson presidential obituaries; most of us must be safely dead to earn that kind of hyperbole. In fairness to future candidates for the job, what is the truth?
A knowledgeable constitutional lawyer, on her election, was her triumphalist clarion call of feminine empowerment in the "Mna na hEireann, come dance with me". acceptance speech not disengenuous? If not, then why is Mrs Robinson leaving the Presidency? It is hers for the asking. It surely can't be that she is simply bored, or has found a more deserving capse than her treasured Mna na hEireann.
As to empowerment, after seven years of her undoubted talents squandered in the Presidency - well, she now knows it. Under our Constitution it is a glass box, glass cage, or even a goldfish bowl. It is our House of Lords, our Legion d'Honneur; simply an honour from the people, and no more.
In his honest and trenchant few words, Sean T. O'Kelly spoke for all who held the post: "I was like a little schoolboy; I had to get permission from the Government to leave the State; I was tied hand and foot; my office was mainly signing on the dotted line; I couldn't go where I liked, do what I liked, or say what I liked".
If the position is otherwise, why does Mrs Robinson not stay on and finish cleansing out the Augean stable, the Irish Republic's notoriously oppressed and pauperised underprivileged? Recall O'Casey's reminder to the faint of heart republican in The Shadow of a Gunman: "No man can do enough for Ireland".
Incidentally, all praise to Mervyn Taylor for his outstanding work during his short years of true empowerment as Cabinet Minister, and for what he has done for those very three classes for whom Mrs Robinson's heart constantly bleeds - Mna na hEireann, the disabled, and our pitiably condemned Travelling community in the Republic. His far reaching laws for the empowerment of the disabled, his badly needed and enlightened anti discrimination and anti racist laws and, finally, that cause closest to Mrs Robinson's heart, Mna na hEireann, in the long overdue and courageous laws for the right to divorce in the Republic.
Now, on his retirement from public life, should not all three of those groups, in gratitude, combine with the rest of us to offer him the well deserved honour of President of Ireland? Long may he live to enjoy that honour, were he to accept it. - Yours, etc.,
Cloughmore, Baile na hAbhainn PO, Co Galway.