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An Phoblacht welcomes readers’ letters. Write in Irish or English, 200 words maximum. Letters may be edited for brevity. Send your letters to [email protected]. No attachments please

Shell-to-sea campaign

OVER the last couple of years the amount of energy republicans put into the Shell to Sea campaign has never reached the heights of the period during the imprisonment of the Rossport Five. Elections, our own campaign work, the bedding down of the institutions in the North and on Shell to Sea’s side a general confusion about who was in charge and what the strategy was, all combined to de-prioritise it for most Sinn Féin activists. We need to look at this again.
Right-wing paramilitaries serving with Shell, boats being boarded and sunk, the almost daily arrest of protestors, the assault on Willie Corduff and a police force that alternates between ignoring attacks on protestors and participating in them. We have our own problems to sort out, no doubt about that, but the people in Rossport need our help. Being attacked by right-wing paramilitaries operating in collusion with the police is, after all, something we’re a little familiar with.
TERRY McCARDLE,
Belfast

No, Minister

FIANNA FÁIL ministers (and their Fine Gael counterparts if there are any) are hanging on to hefty pensions funded by the taxpayer while they are on a very good salary but at the same time as lecturing us ordinary workers and our families about the need to tighten our belts.
Please, no more lectures by Fianna Fáil TDs like the one on RTÉ Radio’s The Late Debate this week lecturing us about the problem being public expenditure.
Fianna Fáil have lost all moral authority on pay and public spending. (And where are the Greens in all this?)
Even if the Government cannot legally enforce a bigger cut than 25%, why aren’t Government TDs like Batt O’Keeffe and his pals leading by example by volunteering a larger sacrifice in the public good? Mr O’Keeffe is, after all, the Minister for Education.
STEPHEN KINSELLA,
Dublin 15

They haven’t gone away you know

I am sure that I was not the only person outraged but not surprised by the remarks of a Priest in recent days regarding the unfortunate victims of the hell-hole that was St Conleth’s Reformatory in Daingean, County Offaly.
Allegedly describing some of the unfortunates who were sent to this so-called reformatory as “young ruffians placed there as no one else would have them”, his reported remarks have naturally offended many.
It is time that all of us stood up to those collared reprobates who think they can get away with spewing tripe from ivory pulpits and talking down to the faithful. For too long theses people have had too much control in this country. Most hope and believe that that day is gone but the reported remarks of the priest in Offaly are a timely reminder that ‘they haven’t gone away you know’.
PAUL MURRAY,
Dublin 11