Sir, - Jim Cusack recently reported in The Irish Times that the Special Branch took a verb close interest in the demonstrations against the visit of the USS John F Kennedy warship. And Sean Swan (letters July 13th) developed the point by asking why and how, if Garda resources are stretched to breaking point, is it necessary or possible for the Gardai or the state to devote such resources to monitoring the activities of people involved in perfectly legitimate political and social activity? A very good question.
In fact, the Special Branch videotaped the demonstrations. But the real question is: why is there an entire section of An Garda Siochana whose function appears to be to "monitor" the perfectly legitimate activities of various political parties and social and solidarity organisations? Such political activities are legitimate, legal, constitutionally guaranteed, are they not? So why has the state invested so much in monitoring openly conducted political and social activities?
Even the language needs to be questioned. When this sort of thing happened in Eastern Europe, we were told that the secret police spied on anyone and everyone. But, in Ireland, the Special Branch monitors activities!
How much does it all cost? Is it good value for money? How many secret police are permanently or frequently deployed in this area of "policing"? Why are any gardai secret or otherwise, assigned to spy on the activities of legitimate organisations? Are the Irish people safer in their beds as a result of this monitoring? And which TDs will volunteer to ask some or all of these questions in the Dail? Yours, etc.,
St Teresa's Road,
Crumlin,
Dublin 12.