Sixty days-plus after we elected them to run the country, our 158 TDs in the Dáil can’t agree on the formation of a government. If this situation prevails, what then? Another election? What chance has that but to produce a similar indecisive outcome. An election will change little and merely serve to prolong the tedious political shenanigans we are now experiencing, from all sides.

We are writing as a concerned group of leading animal welfare organisations including Dogs Trust, Europe’s largest dog welfare charity, and two of Ireland’s oldest and largest animal welfare charities, the Irish SPCA and the Irish Blue Cross.

The article ‘Chernobyl disaster — Adi Roche deserves all our plaudits’ (Our View, April 27, 2016) makes it clear that Ireland has every reason to be proud of Adi Roche’s humanitarian work.

Itamar Rabinovich, chief negotiator for Israel during the Yitzhak Rabin government (1992-5), wrote a book about the failed negotiations with Syria.