Sir, - We know where the FirBolgs, the Tuatha de Dannan and the Fomorians came from. St Patrick, the patron saint of the Irish, was an immigrant.
St Brendan the Navigator travelled further west than any European before him and probably discovered the New World. St Columcille and his followers exiled themselves to Iona and founded monasteries in Lindisfarne and other places in Scotland and the North of England.
We all know about the monks and scholars who migrated to the Continent and founded monasteries and libraries as far away as Bobbio, keeping the flame of civilisation flickering in Europe throughout the Dark Ages.
We have all heard of the Flight of the Earls and the Wild Geese, coffin ships, Ellis Island and Van Diemen's Land. Women and men were taken in chains from Ireland to the Antipodes, where they helped to found a great continent. In this century, over one million people left these shores, not only for England and America and Australia, but for China and Japan and almost every country, oriental, occidental and African.
I myself have an aunt buried in Sydney and an uncle buried in the Bronx. My daughter lives in Madrid and my cousin (of Irish birth) lives in Hudson, but most Irish people of my age can score higher than that in the emigrant stakes.
So Lech Walesa's recent dictum that boundaries are redundant in this global world should find a resonance in Ireland more than in any other country on earth. Of course if we want this to be a snobby, parochial, xenophobic, nasty little island which hoards its resources for itself, I'm sure we can get away with it for the time being at least.
I suggest that all illegal immigrants in Ireland now be given an amnesty and that all future cases be adjudicated by a liberal and independent commission free of the trammels of the Department of Justice. In 1844, the population of Ireland was over eight million Now we have a population half that size with beef galore in storage, butter mountains and set-aside land. - Yours, etc., Sean Crudden,
Jenkinstown, Co Louth.