Madam, - The misuse of words by Government Ministers causes us to move on with a sigh of resignation, but when the perpetrator is a respected organ such as The Irish Times, relied on by many as an English tutor, we must not be so indulgent.
"Mediate" is a verb meaning to go between, generally for the purpose of promoting agreement between contending parties or consensus, at least, and, certainly, peace. "Re-", as my Oxford Dictionary proclaims, is a prefix that is "attachable to any verb", with the sense of doing it again, or again and again, or yet again.
Our Bertie cut his mediating teeth in squalid squabbles between greedy unions and grasping employers. He will not hesitate to go between even such metaphorical dumps of intransigence as Sinn Féin and the DUP, and if, at first, his mediation does not succeed, he will remediate until the DUP is wrestling arms every Sunday on the counter of the Northern Bank and Sinn Féin is bellowing hymns.
But what are we to make of it when Dick Roche goes horsing around Wicklow vales in pursuit of the "remediation" of illegal dumps (front-page report, May 3rd)? Worst of all, where are we left if The Irish Times unblushingly endorses his pretensions without so much as a "sic" or even an inverted comma? The damage, it seems to me, is irremediable. - Yours, etc,
FRANK FARRELL, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.