Madam, – My daughter could have been murdered on Monday night. Those who left a bomb in Maynooth last night should go away with their out-of-date, arrogant, non-representative, republicanism.
Last night my daughter went to the gym in the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth. She came home to say that police and fire brigades and emergency services were rushing into Maynooth. On Tuesday morning I learn that as she walked home last night, she walked past a viable explosive device in a bus, which Army bomb disposal experts later made safe.
I grew up in Belfast in the late 1960s. I joined the Irish Defence Forces in the 1970s. I was happy to work at home assisting the gardaí to fight the very real threat of the Provisional IRA. I celebrated the signing of the Belfast Agreement which brought a sense of normalcy to the lives of my family and friends in Belfast and the Glens of Antrim. I was also happy to work abroad with the UN in peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia.
In my present job, working for an aid agency, I have campaigned against the proliferation of small arms in the developing world and the use of indiscriminate cluster munitions in conflict situation. I have been involved in aid operations in conflict zones including Angola, Darfur, Haiti, Lebanon, Pakistan, south Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma.
I am not unfamiliar with bombs and bullets. I sympathise with all those, across the globe, who have to seek to meet basic needs and obtain fundamental human rights while looking down the barrel of a gun or fearing an explosion around the next corner. That is my job.
But on Tuesday morning it became very, very personal and I am incensed. The people of Ireland, North and South, have overwhelmingly voted for constitutional democracy. They have voted against the bomb and the bullet.
England is our most important economic partner. But if, as a result of misguided republican idealism, people disagree with the visit of the Queen then they should hold up a placard or write a letter to the paper. But how dare they make my daughter walk past a bomb in the hotel of the Glenroyal car park last night. That is unacceptable. – Yours, etc,