Madam, - For all his deftness in dealing with the problems of the peace process, the Taoiseach seems to deal with them as if they were the problems of a foreign country - as if what goes on "up there" has no application or relevance "down here".
According to this analysis, we are a functioning sovereign State, while the North is deeply divided and still struggling to function at devolved level. Therefore, Fianna Fáil will have no truck with Sinn Féin in government, but in the North there can be no devolved government unless there are seats for Sinn Féin as of right.
In the North, parades are licensed and governed by an impartial Parades Commission and must be stripped of all military and paramilitary paraphernalia. But in the South, the military forces of the State are now to parade annually once again to commemorate the 1916 republican uprising.
It is time to come to grips with one basic fact: the 1916 Rising and subsequent War of Independence contributed in no small measure to the subsequent partition of our nation. The IRA's 30-year campaign of terror has served to copper-fasten that partition. And we in this State have grown comfortable within our section of this partitioned nation. For us, a republic born from the barrel of a gun is a matter of "national" pride and is now to become a matter of annual military celebration.
One the one hand, all parties in the North are called on to make sacrifices, to compromise. But, on the other hand, we in this State can continue on our merry way, parading our military in celebration of our physical-force republican genesis, as if the divisions in the North had nothing to do with us at all, as if we had no sacrifices to make, no compromises to offer.
The institutions of this State are not the institutions of this island nation. They are not the institutions of an agreed Ireland. And there is no point pretending they are.
The Taoiseach's schizophrenic stance dodges one very basic question: how can a State that is not a nation exhibit national pride in the fact that the nation remains divided? And that one of the root causes of national division is the establishment of the State that intends to exhibit such national pride? The Taoiseach's speech is addressed to an audience that has ceased to think of this island as our common home and of all its inhabitants as our fellow nationals. Instead that audience has come to identify primarily - almost exclusively - with this State and with its preoccupations. And to identify the State that occupies this section of our island as the embodiment of the republican tradition that was intended to unify Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter throughout the island.
You can be an 18th-century United Ireland party or a 1916 physical force Irish Republican party. Or you can be a 21st-century Agreed Ireland party. But you cannot be all three. The idea that you can shows just how entrenched a "two nations", partitionist mentality has become in this State - not just among the "West Brits" or the other usual suspects, but at the heart of Fianna Fáil, the largest and most ostentatiously republican of the democratic parties in the State. - Yours, etc,
JIM MURPHY, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Madam, - Why would anyone want to "celebrate" the 1916 Rising with a military parade? Last time I looked, we were an officially neutral country, and had just managed to demilitarise Irish republicanism.
How about a reworked St Patrick's Day parade that celebrates and challenges the real republicanism that the Proclamation espoused - offering "equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens", and "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". - Yours, etc,
BRIAN SHEEHAN, Charleston Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
Madam, - At a time when in Northern Ireland the community is trying to move away from partisan parades, it is extraordinary that Bertie Ahern should decide to re-establish a military parade to commemorate the 1916 Rising. In 1970 a Fianna Fáil government ceased having this kind of parade - for good reasons - and one has to question why it is being revived at this stage.
It seems to me that the decision to resurrect the parade, after all these years is actually about lining up Sinn Féin as a possible coalition partner after the next election.
The image of Bertie as Taoiseach and and Gerry Adams as Tánaiste, linked arm in arm, parading down O'Connell Street is not one that has any appeal for me. - Yours, etc,
Cllr MARIE BAKER (Fine Gael), Avondale Lawn, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Madam, - The decision by the leader of Fianna Fáil to reinstate the annual 1916 Easter Parade can only be described as an insult to all true republicans. The announcement at the Fianna Fail Ardfheis smacks of political opportunism and is an insult to the 1916 leaders.
While Mr Ahern says this move is an attempt to reclaim "the spirit of 1916", he does not specify what he means. Will this Easter parade, with its large-scale military presence, also commemorate the republicans executed by the Fianna Fáil party? We should not overlook the role played by Fianna Fáil in crushing traditional republicanism by harassment, draconian laws, imprisonment and execution.
The historical record shows that Fianna Fáil executed more republicans than the British Army during the War of Independence. - Yours, etc,
JOE LYNCH, Beechgrove Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, Limerick.
Madam, - The reinstatement of the traditional 1916 Easter military parade is to be welcomed. However. it is a matter of regret that the so-called republican party found it necessary to abandon the parade, and its republican ethos, in the first instance.
Furthermore, it is to be hoped that this decision to embrace Pearse, Connolly, Clarke and the rest of the signatories to the Easter Proclamation is not just a political stunt to outmanoeuvre Sinn Féin. - Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER, Delaford Lawn, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.