Which portraits should be removed?

Labour Senator James Heffernan ponders whether it was appropriate that the portraits of politicians who had been “found culpable of corruption, of abuse of power, abuses of privilege and, indeed perjury”, should still hang in Leinster House.

He claimed these people “have stained political life in Ireland and it’s time they were wiped from our memory” (Irish Examiner, Mar 28).

Does he include in his list of inappropriate images the portrait of former Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald?

Did not Dr FitzGerald’s Government bail out AIB to the painful tune of £400m in 1985 by agreeing to cover the losses of the Insurance Corporation of Ireland which was a subsidiary of AIB?

Six years later AIB wrote off debts of around £200,000 incurred by Dr FitzGerald after the collapse of Guinness Peat Aviation.

The chairman of AIB at the time was Peter Sutherland, who was later appointed as Ireland’s member of the European Commission.

And what about Mr WT Cosgrave who, as first President of the Executive Council 1922-1932, sanctioned the unlawful execution of 77 Republican prisoners?

Tom Cooper

Knocklyon

Dublin 16