Riled about TV3 doc

Ryle Dwyer (Irish Examiner Mar 25) said of TV3’s recent television programme, In the Name of the Republic, that it ‘presents a disturbingly real account of the War of Independence’.

Surely, as a published historian of some repute, Dwyer should have more sense than to provide such an endorsement of a two-part series that, ouroboros-like, debunked its own assertions throughout.

In the prelude to broadcast, we were told by presenter and Trinity college professor Eunan O’Halpin of one list of IRA victims that, although a figure is given, ‘the true figure is significantly higher’. Over the course of two episodes, we witnessed O’Halpin seeking to prove prior-made assertions; in essence, to find proof to fit a narrative. Thus, on local folklore, a field in Laois is dug up in the quest for two such victims. Neither body is found.