Sir, - I am surprised that David Herman's letter on nationalist myths (May 8th) contains so many myths of its own. Mr Herman states that the decline of the Protestant population in the Republic "has been primarly a result of the cruel Ne Temere decree". This is not true. One hundred and five thousand Protestants left Saorstat Eireann between 1911 and 1926, including 38,000 members of the British Armed Forces. This represented 50 per cent of the entire Protestant population in the State.
After 1926, the Protestant decline was marginally greater than the equivalent Roman Catholic decline through a combination of emigration due to economic stagnation, a natural decrease, a general decline in religious affiliation, and of course Ne Temere. At present, the Protestant population of the Republic of Ireland has stabilised, and there is some evidence of an increase. So while the abuse of Ne Temere was extremely traumatic for the minority community, it was in fact not as crucial to the decline as Mr Herman suggests. It is also true that when the test case for Ne Temere was taken in the courts, it was a British court that ruled that the pledge was binding, not an Irish one
It is neither disgraceful nor "totally unjustified to claim that these Protestants left because they were no longer a privileged class", when the occupational evidence of the 1901 and 1911 census data shows that they were completely bound up in the management of business and the administration of government.
It is a great pity that Mr. Herman chose to publish these myths, given that we will all find the real past hard enough to put behind us without adding to the load. - Yours, etc., Barry Keane,
College Road, Cork.