Sir, - Your leader and letters page of January 26th, made even more than usually interesting reading. Printed between your leader writer's and Mr Myers's anguished comments on the apparently escalating brutality aimed at vulnerable people in our society, there was a marvellously optimistic letter from Mr John de Courcy Ireland. The latter is a timely reminder of the fact that justice is not confined to the criminal justice system, and that justice should guide not only how society deals with criminals, but (more importantly) how society prevents crime. How just is it that so many children now grow up in brutalised homes and districts, without ever a hope of a good education and a meaningful productive adulthood?
There is another word that cropped up recently, solidarity. To deliver justice to all, a level of solidarity, much greater than ever contemplated by any significant number of people in this country, will be essential. And it will be a level of solidarity that will require hitherto unimagined transfers of money.
Who will give the lead here? Our elected politicians? Or can they be forgiven for not looking much beyond the next election? Might I therefore very gently suggest the society we live in. We can have a country "not only where everyone would have something to do but something he or she enjoyed doing." - Yours, etc.,
Waterloo Road,
Dublin 4.