Queen is welcome but she must apologise

IN response to JJ McGrath (Letters, June 29), I do not object to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth visiting Ireland. In fact I believe that to normalise relations between these two neighbours, it is imperative that she visits.

And I am not digging up the past. Up until 1949 Ireland remained within a commonwealth headed by Queen Elizabeth’s father. And this will be the first visit by a British monarch since our independence from British rule, a first visit by a monarch whose ancestors conquered and exploited this country.

Though time has passed and we are an independent state now, the queen nevertheless must apologise for all her ancestors’ acts of tyranny.