Sir, – Fintan O'Toole writes: "Anxiety that the Ulster fry cannot survive without a proper English sausage is one of the clichés of protocol jingoism" ("Truss's latest take on NI protocol reveals what is really going on", Opinion & Analysis, May 17th).
Until the arrival of most of the British supermarket chains in the North in the 1990s, no Northerner would have eaten an English sausage at breakfast – or indeed at any other time of the day.
The locally produced sausage, which I subsequently learned was generally far superior to those widely available in England, dominated Northern supermarket shelves. And if you bought your sausages from the local butcher, they were likely made by that butcher.
I first tasted an English sausage when I visited Liverpool in 1980, at the age of 12. The Cumberland in question was entirely foreign to me, and was the subject of much curiosity. – Yours, etc,
PAUL O’KANE,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.