Madam, - Regardless of our past attitude to, and future worry about, Sinn Féin, we owe a debt of gratitude to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness for their achievement in the current response from the IRA. It is not simply a question of "thanks for stopping murdering us", as some cynics have put it. It is a major step in Ireland's forward march into constitutionalism leaving the dark days of physical force republicanism behind.
The problem is: will the underlying ideology live on? Is there just going to be a change in the letter in front of IRA? We now have had the Old IRA, the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA, the Continuity IRA, and the Real IRA. It is exactly as Oliver St John Gogarty predicted in the 1930s: the green IRA to be taken over by the greener IRA only to be ousted in turn by the still greener IRA and so on ad infinitum.
This underlying ideology could be termed Pearsism, even if the real Pearse is of only marginal significance. The cult of Pearsism is a heady brew, cultivated among others by mullahs in Christian Brothers schools where boys were expected to exult in the holy blood sacrifice of the martyrs of Easter 1916. It is distilled by ambitious politicians and some besotted historians as well as sundry waffling obsessed "patriots".
Will the ambitious politicians, besotted historians and waffling "patriots" still keep the cult of Pearsism alive? Will Pearse the Undead still walk the lobby of Government Buildings? The real Pearse wore a uniform and raised his flag to fight an honourable campaign, never murdered anyone and was even open to the possibility of a monarchy if that was what the people wanted. He also had the moral courage to "stand down and decommission" to save Irish lives. The simple nobility of his honourable and brave stand can be abstracted from his complex personal circumstances: his naivety about the Northern unionists and his despair at the approaching collapse of his school that swung him onto the wilder shores of millenarianism.
Yet Pearse the Undead is still the invisible figure in atrocities - even Omagh, whose perpetrators claim him as their excuse, mentor and motivator. Despite the final acceptance of Redmondite constitutionalist conciliation in the "principle of consent" in the Good Friday Agreement and now the movement into democracy, our Taoiseach puts up a picture of Pearse rather than Daniel O'Connell, Parnell or Redmond.
If the Government continues to parade at Arbour Hill to announce that there is "no change from verbal orders" of April 24th, 1916, Pearse the Undead will continue to command the night and the minds if idealistic youth. Listening to speakers at the Byrne/Perry Summer School, it became clear that, if there is not a positive change now in our popular political culture, the centenary Easter Rising commemoration of 2016 will inevitably cause a resurgence of Pearsism to plague our grandchildren. President Gerry Adams could well be the target of its "patriotic" vitriol.
Can we now predict the arrival of "The NIRA" (the New IRA)? - Yours, etc,
PATRICK D GOGGIN, Glenageary Woods, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.