THE unveiling of Robert Ballagh’s, framed etched glass portrait of Patrick Pearse, inside the Sinn Féin rooms of Stormont, to the North’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, in the presence of Mr Ballagh and the public, resonates with an irony.

YOUR correspondent Dr Gerard Morgan’s enthusiastic backing of Dr Brian Murphy’s claim that the British government ‘betrayed Home Rule is based on the conviction that a falsehood often repeated will eventually become true (letters, December 1).