Lenihan should deal with the real issue

I DON’T resent Brian Lenihan giving the oration at Béal na mBláth because he is a member of Fianna Fáil. However, I do resent him presenting as a responsible politician when the party he is such a proud member of has done more to facilitate corruption in this country than any other party in modern Europe.

The only long-standing political achievement of FF has been to inculcate the concept of ever decreasing expectation among our population for the potential of politics to make our lives better.

How do we escape this legacy? This is the question that should form the central theme of Mr Lenihan’s speech on the spot where Michael Collins’s young life was cut short.

For many, Collins represented the high tide of hope in our own ability to determine our futures. His assassination was, for me, more a representation of the symbolic end of our transformation from a servile, occupied people to a proud, self-confident people worthy of taking our destiny in our hands.

The day Collins died was the day self-loathing gripped the heart of Irish politics and perhaps, ironically, a true soldier of destiny was lost.

I defy Mr Lenihan, or those who admire him for no other reason than his attempts to limit the devastating damage his party has inflicted on this country, to list the perceived successes of the Soldiers of Destiny since the party’s foundation.

The truth is FF delivered our young nation into the hands of an unworthy church in defiance of even the loosest definition of true republicanism. It was FF that made this an island too small for all of its people by only ever committing it to pandering to a core constituency.

The Northern unionists, after the Good Friday Agreement was signed,acknowledged that the North was a cold house for Catholics.

Brian Lenihan could swallow his pride next Sunday and admit his party has done its best to make this failed state a cold house for anyone who didn’t belong to the army of so-called Soldiers of Destiny.

Declan Doyle

Lisdowney

Kilkenny