Sir, - Myles Crowe (November 9th) laments the failure of this State to live up to the promises given in the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of the First Dail. It is a very common mistake to assume that our present State is a continuation of the Republic that was proclaimed in 1916 and was actually beginning to function six years later. And, of course, those in power would like us to believe that it is.
However, anybody who takes the trouble to scrape away the patina left by nearly 80 years of legislation, prevarication and balderdash will discover that the founding documents of our current State are in fact two Acts of the Westminster parliament: the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the Irish Free State Constitution Act of 1922, both of them passed after the Irish representatives had withdrawn from that assembly.
The Proclamation of 1916 and the Democratic Programme of the First Dail have no legal status at all. In fact a bitter Civil War was fought to ensure that no Irish State based on those documents would come into existence. - Yours, etc.,
Pol O Croideain, Boithrin Fada, Gaillimh.