Sir, - The Patten Commission's report is headed "A New Beginning - Policing in Northern Ireland". The chairman, Chris Patten, a Catholic, is a former governor of Hong Kong whose forebears emigrated from the west of Ireland in Famine times. Including the chairman, there were eight members on the Commission. Two, including the chairman, were from Britain; three were from Northern Ireland; two were from the US and one from Canada.
The commission did not recommend that the RUC be disbanded. It did, however, recommend that: (1) serving members be offered generous retirement terms; (2) police recruiting agencies in Great Britain should take full account of policing experience in Northern Ireland in considering applications for employment in police services in Great Britain; (3) police vacancies be advertised beyond Northern Ireland in the rest of the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland; (4) an equal number of Protestants and Catholics be drawn from a pool of qualified candidates.
Having recommended that the GAA's Rule 21 be dropped, the Commission noted that "the continued existence of this rule in the light of our recommendations can only be a deterrent to the recruitment of Catholics, or a factor in separating those Catholics who join the police from an important part of their culture."
Senator Maurice Hayes, previously Northern Ireland Ombudsman and permanent secretary to the Northern Ireland Department of Health and Social Services, was a member of the Patten Commission. He has a distinguished GAA record.
Is the GAA leadership prepared to give the peace process a push by "decommissioning" Rule 21 now? Perhaps it may do no harm to recall that the anti-Treaty constituency was not - for obvious reasons - represented in the first generation of gardai. Predictably, that constituency's acceptance of the new force tended to be less than total on occasion. Indeed, before the infant State was seven years old the standing committee of Sinn Fein tried to have members of the Garda Siochana and the Army banned from the GAA to promote "national purity". Fortunately for the GAA, that ethnic cleansing initiative was a non-starter.
By the time De Valera's government came to power in 1932, there was, I understand, widespread expectation in extremist nationalists circles that wholesale Garda purges would follow. In the event, only two members of the force were sidelined. The Commissioner, General O'Duffy, was offered and refused a post in the semi-state service. Chief Supt Neligan of the Special Branch was offered and accepted a post in the Land Commission at his existing salary.
According to Senator Manning's recently published biography of James Dillon, the outgoing government, had it been returned to power in 1932, intended to sideline O'Duffy. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Woulfe, Victoria Road, Dublin 6.