A chara, - Mr John Bruton (writing in The Irish Times of April 20th, and as per your Dail Report of April 22nd) treats the agreement not as the means to some other end, but rather as an end in itself. He advocates that the agreement, and the institutions it creates, must become the focus of a new loyalty to replace the two traditional aspirations - a united Ireland and membership of the United Kingdom.
Mr Bruton's acceptance of a permanent partition of Ireland is at variance with the proposed amended wording of Article 3 of the Constitution, i.e. that "it is the firm will of the Irish nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland . . ." He has missed the defining characteristic of this agreement: that the participants acknowledge the substantial differences between their continuing and equally legitimate political aspirations, but reaffirm their absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving these differences.
There is every incentive for nationalists and republicans to view the agreement as a means to an end, as a "stepping stone", painstakingly sculpted by a multiplicity of interests, but still a stepping stone. I hope that Irish people on both sides of the Border will vote in favour of the agreement, not for the reasons put forward by Mr Bruton, but rather as a commitment to partnership, equality and mutual respect and as a means to achieving a united Ireland, however long that might take. - Is mise,
Tadgh Crowley
Marina Village, Malahide, Co Dublin.