Sir, - Perhaps the saddest aspect of Friday's Garda protest, to paraphrase your editorial of Saturday, May 2nd, was that it should inveigle The Irish Times to lapse into the gutter, in grim union with that section of the tabloid press that has nested there. As a reader of this newspaper, I am well used to its stomach-curdling inclination to be selective with the facts, when it suits, to substantiate its ill-contrived and erroneous news appraisals.
Your reference to "a few principled members" is manipulative, obtuse, and deceitful journalism at its worst. It deceptively pays no regard to their own disgust at the unprofessional mishandling of their interests, even though their sense of duty and continuity overrode the call to protest. Nor does it take into account the tacit approval by those on "strike" for those who worked, without which this day of action could not have taken place.
These comments editorially abuse the 99 per cent of gardai whose principles would never lead them to debase the facts as your Editorial so glibly did last Saturday. There was no deceit, no lies, no intent to fool the public. The day off sick was a demonstration, nothing more, by a mature force whose protests have been choked to death by the archaic rules which deprive them of the right to strike. If you disagree with that right, then you, the self-appointed principled one, must not only listen, but act upon their pleas.
The only "death in the family" was the largely unnoticed and as yet uncriticised passing away of that one-time perceptive organ of the Irish Government which valued its "right arm", understood the perils and appreciated its constitutionally imposed debility to forcefully state its case. A force, abandoned and deprived in times of plenty by the very top, for once opened its mouth and cried, "Stop, we are here and we would like you to listen". For this crime, the bulk of the Garda Siochana were publicly rebuked by a representative of our national "quality" press.
If you insist on wallowing in the grime with "members of lower rank earning more than their superiors", then have the integrity - if there is any left - to print the figures, hour for hour and see how well this attention-grabber holds up. Indeed it was a black Friday, that the Garda should be led to this point of brinkmanship; but more than that it was a grim Saturday to witness your biased and unrepresentative despoiling of the truth. - Yours, etc.,
Dermot Scully,
Kennelsfort Road, Palmerstown, Dublin.