The Presidential Election

Sir, - I write in a personal capacity, though I make no effort to hide my partisan position.

Sir, - I write in a personal capacity, though I make no effort to hide my partisan position.

I haven't known Adi Roche for very long. But I know that she is an intelligent, serious, brave, committed and idealistic person - perhaps more so than anyone else I have ever known in public life. She means everything she says, and she has delivered on every commitment she has made. She has a deep and genuine moral view - an old-fashioned commodity I know, but extraordinarily refreshing to encounter. She can - she already has - made a difference to Ireland in the work she has done and the energy she brings.

This is the woman that you have sought to trivialise and sneer at throughout her campaign - not on the basis of any crime she has committed, or any wrong-doing, or anything remotely unethical, but just because you've decided it's easy. I have seen her hurt and bruised by the smears and the cheap shots that have passed for analysis and commentary in your paper. But I have never seen her bowed or beaten, despite your best efforts.

Why The Irish Times has chosen to try to marginalise Adi Roche's campaign is a mystery to me. But I have no doubt whatever that it is a deliberate decision on your part. When I wrote to you pointing out the material inaccuracies in your treatment of your own opinion poll, it took you four days to publish the letter - and then only after you had failed to find anyone who could rebut it.

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When I submitted a detailed analysis of your coverage, which showed that in important respects you were treating Adi as the least important candidate in the election, you ignored it. The coverage did balance out a little better for the next day or so, but it was back to sneering as usual immediately thereafter.

Your below-the-fold, photo-less coverage of the Adi Roche campaign, replete with all its funny colour pieces designed to portray her as everything from a mad Stalinist to the head of the Hare Krishna movement, is so far removed from the truth to which you have always committed yourself that I can only conclude there is another agenda at play.

What it is, I don't know. But I don't want to buy it any more. I realised yesterday, with a shock, that I have been buying The Irish Times, six days a week, for 30 years. I search it out if I'm abroad. I scan it every morning, before buying it, on the Internet.

Throughout that 30 years, I have had an unshakeable faith in the essential fairness of the newspaper. It hasn't always been objective, it hasn't always been right, it hasn't always been agreeable. But it has always, at bottom, been fair. At least, that's been an article of faith with me.

Not that it will cost you a night's sleep, but I want you to know that I will never buy The Irish Times again as long as I live. I respect the professionalism of your journalists and reporters. I admire the integrity of your political staff. But nobody will ever persuade me that the sense of fairness that I have valued all my life still lives at the top of The Irish Times. - Yours, etc.,

Manager, Adi Roche Campaign, Glenageary, Co Dublin.