Letters to the Editor: Politicians should not be expected to attend all funerals

Kerry councillor Aoife Thornton said that the expectation to be at all funerals is one of her bugbears. Picture: Domnick Walsh/Eye Focus LTD

I refer to your editorial, ‘Politicians stepping back’ and Listowel’s Aoife Thornton’s decision to retire from politics with the expectation to be at all funerals one of her bugbears ( Irish Examiner, February 8).

I was at a big country funeral recently in the heart of Co Kerry. My connection to the deceased 85-year-old was through his daughter-in-law. Yet who was one of the first people to make their way up the small, intimate church to sympathise with the family after the priest had concluded the Mass, but none other than a popular TD?