Sir, - Fr Joe McVeigh (July 1st) states that "the British army and the RUC continue to intimidate and harass nationalists in general and members of the GAA in particular," and therefore the GAA must retain Rule 21. To be logical, therefore, we must extend the ban to exclude all who harass nationalists and members of the GAA, i.e. members of the IRA who have maimed and murdered more Catholics/nationalists than either the RUC or British army and who continue the beatings, knee-cappings and punishment shootings; all paedophiles, whether priests, GAA officials or plain ordinary members; pimps, prostitutes and politicians who use their positions to enrich themselves at the expense of the people they purport to serve. The list could be extended with a little imagination.
It does seem a bit illogical that the organisations whose members murdered gardai (Clerkin, Morley and McCabe come to mind), Senator Fox, Jim Devlin the great Tyrone footballer (and the hundreds murdered by bombs and bullets in Northern Ireland by unionist and nationalist murder gangs) should not also be banned from the GAA. We have been too lenient. - Yours, etc., Padraig McGinn,
Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim.