Madam, - The hysterical harangue hurled at President McAleese by Finian Cunningham (September 9th) calls for some response. He is apparently outraged that the President does not show "solidarity" with the Catholics of Ardoyne and other places. I believe Mr Cunningham's contention is absurd beyond words. Mrs McAleese grew up in Ardoyne and both she and her family had first-hand experience of the pogroms to which he refers.
I dare say she knows more about beleaguered nationalists than critics pontificating from the safety of the South.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Mr Cunningham is shocked that the President should speak to loyalists. It appears that some of us who would profess to be admirers of the father of republicanism, Wolfe Tone, have little time for his vision of a nation composed of "Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters". - Yours, etc,
Fr IGGY O'DONOVAN, Rome, Italy.