Madam, - We refer to John Cooney's letter of August 29th dealing with our withdrawal from a speaking engagement at the Humbert-Davitt Summer School.
Having both attended the event on August 26th organised by the summer school to honour the McCartney sisters at the invitation of John Cooney, we were surprised to see the controversy revisited in your letters page.
We had made a particular effort to attend this event at which the McCartney sisters received a very well deserved award in recognition of their fight for justice for their brother Robert, the first such award made to them in the Republic. We had hoped our attendance would demonstrate our goodwill towards the summer school and help to conclude the unfortunate events that led to our withdrawal from a session earlier in the week.
The session we were due to speak to was on "the Role of Independents in Irish politics" and the third member of the panel was to have been Dr Jerry Cowley TD. Dr Cowley had his invitation to speak withdrawn the day before because of a row about the format of a round table session later in the week on the Corrib gas issue.
Having spent time preparing papers for the session, both of us had travelled to participate. We regretted losing a valuable opportunity to articulate the future role of Independents. We also regretted not being able to fulfil a commitment we had made, but knew we had no choice.
John Cooney accuses us of misunderstanding the substantive issue. We understood very well the issues of solidarity with a fellow Independent and the vital issue of freedom of speech which were at the core. Nine of the 14 Dáil Independents co-operate within the Dáil's Technical Group. While we respect the differing views within that group there are many issues where common ground can make us more effective individually and collectively.
All three of us are members of that group and it should have been understood by the director of the school that we were put in an impossible situation.
I hope this sets the record straight for once and for all. - Yours, etc,
CATHERINE MURPHY TD,
MARIAN HARKIN TD MEP,
Dáil Éireann,
Dublin 2.