Madam, - Why do the words "pot", "kettle", "black" and "calling" immediately spring to mind when one reads Niall O'Dowd's ill-tempered attack on Trina Vargo ("Illegal Irish are a long way from galas and golf", Opinion, November 20th)? For she is stating what the dogs in the streets of the Bronx know: that the Irish-American lobby appeals to the thinly-disguised anti-Hispanic racism that now pervades the immigration debate in this country in a bid to get preferential treatment for its own illegals.
Mr O'Dowd says Trina Vargo's US-Ireland Alliance "busies itself with an annual Hollywood gala, selling Ryder Cup executive boxes and sending well-heeled Americans, both elite college students and golfers, to Ireland".
Maybe. But is that any worse than Niall O'Dowd organising yearly love-ins for fat-cat corporate chieftains in Wall Street, the endless obsequiousness he shows towards Hillary Clinton, or the latest piece of self-publicising nonsense - a suggestion that Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness lead the St Patrick's Day parade in New York? - Yours, etc,
ED MOLONEY, Bronx, New York.