Right decision

As the deserter issue is such a complicated one, I believe that Justice Minister Alan Shatter has approached it in the right way.

His proposal, as announced in the Dáil, is to grant a “pardon and amnesty to those who absented themselves from the Defence Forces without leave or permission to fight on the Allied side”.

Irish historians, such as Michael Kennedy, have argued that a blanket pardon for all Emergency army deserters would be problematic as we have no real idea where the deserters went after they left the Defence Forces.

There is much research that still needs to be done to find out exactly where Irish army deserters went once they left.

Dr Bernard Kelly

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow School of History, Classics, and Archaeology

Old Medical School

Teviot Place

Edinburgh