Priest was victim of a deliberate slander

I SEE Ryle Dwyer has resurrected the old canard about the priest in Daingean who admitted he had boys stripped naked and flogged in a stairwell to make it more humiliating (Irish Examiner, May 6). Allow me to lay that particular ghost to rest.

To begin with, the priest did not admit any such thing and wrote a letter to a daily newspaper denying he had ever made the statement.

But for one long summer of hysteria before that letter appeared, the accusation was repeated day after day ad nauseam and, I believe, mentioned in the Dáil.

I was so horrified at the time that I began to make discreet enquiries, and I am now satisfied the accusation was a deliberate slander, like the accusations against Nora Wall and against the supposed killer of Willie Delaney, and many others.

The authorities in the North have introduced legislation to ban the dissemination of material inciting to hatred.

Shouldn’t we do the same, leave our old hatreds behind and move on?

Aidan McGing

122 Sundays Well Road

Cork