IT was one of the scariest nights of my life. It was February 18, 1987, and my livelihood was hanging by a thread.

YOUR columnist Diarmaid Ferriter dealt with the origins of Fine Gael (February 21).

IN letters (December 4) on the awful killing of the Pearson brothers of Coolacrease in Co Offaly, Fr Brian Murphy OSB and Paddy Heaney fly in the face of facts.

NIALL GINTY (Letters, November 19) and Eoghan Harris (Sunday Independent, November 11) both commented on my letter to you (November 9).

THE general election revealed a surprising historical connection with the War of Independence.

IT would seem a pity to close Limerick port, our gateway to the sea. Happily, however, the proposal comes just at a time when it seems most obviously misguided.

YOUNG men can become suicidal if they fail to live up to macho male stereotypes typified in sports such as rugby, a monk at a top college warned yesterday.

A DROP in the number of nuns entering the Benedictine Order has forced the prestigious Kylemore Abbey School in Connemara, Co Galway to announce it will shut its doors.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese will attend a major conference in Cork at the weekend to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising.

MAY I congratulate Mr Robin Bury of the Reform Movement for his non-reply (‘Pearse putsch in 1916 was against wishes of vast majority,’ Irish Examiner letters December 12) to my earlier letter of November 28 (‘Pearse the rebel was once a democrat who had been betrayed’).

DR BRIAN MURPHY OSB, of Glenstal Abbey, states that “the Easter Rising, while not mandated by the normal voting process, became a mandatory obligation of democrats” (Irish Examiner letters, November 28).

I WELCOME the important letter by Dr Brian Murphy OSB on the undemocratic opposition to Home Rule in 1910-1914 and afterwards (Irish Examiner, November 28).

ROBIN BURY of the Reform Movement states (Irish Examiner November 8) that “1916 was not mandated.”