Senator quit over failure to clinch EU post

DEIRDRE de Búrca was nominated to the Seanad by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2007 after failing to get elected to the Dáil for Wicklow.

That she owed her one national public office to such a source and yet now rails against the Green’s becoming “no more than an extension of the Fianna Fáil party” is indeed a rich irony.

It is quite clear, even from her own self-serving account of her departure from politics, that it was prompted by her non-appointment to Maire Geoghegan-Quinn’s Brussels cabinet.

Evidently the commissioner’s pro-nuclear and pro-GM crops stance would not have troubled Ms de Búrca.

Other major issues, such as the Tara motorway, Corrib gas and US military use of Shannon, upon which she and her former colleagues sold out as soon as they entered government, find no mention in her valedictory utterances.

She makes no mention either of the destruction by “developers” of Greystones harbour in her constituency, which she purported to oppose but which has proceeded notwithstanding her role for the past two-and-a-half years as what she (self-importantly and inaccurately) terms “a member of this current government”.

Whatever about George Lee, her departure will leave politics none the poorer, especially if it contributes to a speedier destruction of the Government and the Green party.

Carmel McKenna Colmán Etchingham

Hacketstown

Co Carlow