Sir, – Shortly in Northern Ireland the G8 summit will be held. What I cannot understand is why my Government here in the Republic is sending armed Garda units to patrol the Border and set up special courts and holding centres for this event that has nothing to do with us, with the money the Irish taxpayers cannot afford.
Surely the British can afford to pay for the security of this international conference without the Irish Government screwing us even more for something we can ill afford and which has nothing to do with the Irish Republic.
Would this money be better spent on our run-down hospitals and schools than on this foreign elitist weekend?
If people want to go and protest for one reason or another surely this is their democratic right without the security services North and South of the Irish border using heavy-handed tactics to crush them and criminalise them – or is George Orwell's book 1984 becoming a reality? – Yours, etc,
MARTIN FORD,
St Anne’s Terrace,
Sligo.