Sir, – Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has suggested that he may ask the President to pardon the Irish soldiers who deserted the Irish army during the second World War to fight with the British forces. He proposes this on the grounds that they went to fight for freedom and he approves of their idealism.
Leaving aside any discussion of the rights and wrongs of this opinion, does his proposal not set a dangerous precedent? What these men did was a crime in the 1940s. If they are pardoned retrospectively for that crime, might not a future minister pardon other Irish people who were sentenced for crimes they committed in the past on the grounds that they too were motivated by idealism? How about the many men interned without trial for IRA membership or those executed in the 1940s for killing members of An Garda Síochána? A future Sinn Féin minister, for example, might think their crimes forgivable because they believed they were fighting for a united Ireland. – Yours, etc,