Sir, - John Waters writes (Opinion, May 1st): "The UK has no such constitution [as the Irish], and so is not a fully functioning democracy." This is nonsense. Alone among modern states, the UK has no written constitution, but it has all the institutions of a democracy - free elections, a responsible government, political control of the armed forces and all the rights enshrined in the European Convention. The monarch has no real power.
Mr Waters thinks that because they did not have what he regards as "the rights of full citizenship", the McGimpsey brothers could not have challenged the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the London courts. Actually, the Agreement was challenged in both the High Court and Court of Appeal in London by Lord Molyneaux, but the appeal failed, because a body of case law determined that treaties are non-justiciable. The whole point of the McGimpsey case was to secure a judicial interpretation of the Irish Constitution in the Irish Court.
I leave it to others to answer the laughable assertion that Articles 2 and 3, far from being an interference in the affairs of Northern Ireland - as the very politicians who argued for their amendment claimed - were in reality a means by which the poor, benighted Northerners could avail themselves of "the democratic ethos of the southern State"! - Yours, etc.,
Cornelius O'Leary, Emeritus Professor, Department of Politics, Queen's University, Belfast 7.