Madam, - In the Taoiseach's recent article in your pages, I was stunned to read comments about the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which paved the way for the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (Opinion & Analysis, August 8th). Mr Ahern lauded Dr Garret FitzGerald for his contribution to the 1985 agreement, describing it as "a shaft of light at a time of despair". These comments, however, are completely at odds with Mr Ahern's reaction at the time.
In the Dáil debate on the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, Mr Ahern denounced it in the strongest possible terms, saying: "We cannot pretend that this agreement will improve things, when patently it will not. We cannot pretend it is wonderful when we know it is a disaster".
He continued: "I find it impossible to detect any positive aspects for either the nationalist population, the Irish Government or the country as a whole". He went on to lament the fact that he could not find in the agreement "a sentence that would assure me that. . .movements towards reconciliation would be enhanced".
Far from congratulating Dr FitzGerald on his contribution, Mr Ahern was most stinging in his criticism, saying that the Fine Gael/Labour Government had "wantonly squandered our deepest aspirations" and had "greatly underestimated the long-term damage they have done and may do to bipartisanship".
Fianna Fáil's opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement weakened Dr FitzGerald in his dealings with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and bolstered Unionist attempts to wreck the progress that had been made. The party's opportunistic partisan stance marked arguably the most despicable low point of the tawdry "Haughey era".
Mr Ahern seems to ignore his contribution to this. To seek to airbrush his opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement from recent history, as he seemed to do in his article of August 8th, is an act of breathtaking hypocrisy. - Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH, Brooklawn, Clontarf, Dublin 3.