Following the announcement in Dáil Eireann on June 12 by Minister for Justice, Equality, and Defence Alan Shatter, on behalf of the Irish Government, the Irish Soldiers Pardons Campaign (WW2), would like to take this opportunity to commend him for having the wisdom, compassion and moral courage in taking positive action to enable a resolution on the pardons issue to be achieved which will remove in so far as practical the stigmaof dishonour attached to those named as dismissed for desertion in the republished blacklist.

Tom Cooper’s assumptions (Jan 26) about the raison d’être for our campaign are off the mark.