Dear Editor: With regard to "The cost of Colman Byrne" (E&L, November 18th) I wish to make a few comments. As USI president my expenses are well known, and were well known prior to this article.

I receive £10 for an overnight stay and £7 for a day away from the office and 30p per mile of use by car to make a college visit. This rate is 5 pence lower than the staff rate, as USI pays insurance for the president and another officer to use the car for union work.

This rate was worked out by the administrative manager of the Union of Students in Ireland.

USI officers record their expenses on expense sheets to allow students and other interested parties to see the details. Our wages are linked to the wages of clerical officers in the civil service. Indeed their expense scale is higher: the civil service mileage rate starts at 68.2p for the first 2,000 miles.

The fact that I have a car has enabled me to visit more colleges in the last year than any previous president of the organisation. The car also saves large amounts of time which would normally be spent on public transport. Perhaps John Connolly (the author of the article) would prefer me to take the more traditional mode of student transport, the bicycle?

Mr Connolly writes: "Sending Byrne to the two-day `Building the Peace' conference in Belfast on February 14th to 16th, 1997, cost USI £177.50 including £76.80 in mileage, £25 in `entertainment' and £48.70 in meals." The journalist failed to clarify that this figure included not only myself, but also the union development officer and the western area convenor.

With regard to the seven days abroad which Mr Connolly refers to, I was also accompanied by other officers and could not possibly claim those sort of expenses for my own individual use. It is common practice for the President to claim all the expenses and then allocate expenses each day to the group with him.

It is very kind of Mr Connolly to allude to my election manifesto for 1996, in particular the section on financial efficiency; the fact that in one year I cleared a £40,000 debt and employed two extra members of staff for the organisation proves that there is financial efficiency within the Union of Students in Ireland.

The timing of the article was indeed suspect coming as it did while we were fighting a disaffiliation referendum in UCD and just two days before UCD students were due to vote in the referendum - a referendum we subsequently lost by a slim margin of nine votes. Prior to the article, I clarified the expenses with Mr Connolly; however, he chose not to include such a clarification in the article. I would like to know why exactly Mr Connolly did not clarify?

I have received numerous telephone calls, letters and faxes of support from many people in the field of education. All the messages of support expressed shock at the tone of Mr Connolly's article. Anyone involved in education knows that I have always behaved in a professional manner.