Madam, - The comments of Gerry Adams in defending the Sinn Féin TDs photographed in Portlaoise Prison with the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe are stomach-churning (The Irish Times, September 17th).
To attempt, as he does, to attack those who rightly criticise this stunt, accusing them of causing further distress for the McCabe family is an outrageous slur and an affront to every democrat.
Seven years ago Mr Adams said: "We think it was totally wrong that he [Det McCabe] should have been killed" (The Irish Times, October 28th, 1996). That June, in the immediate aftermath of the killings, he said such killings had no place in the "republican struggle".
Now we see how hollow these words were. Today he feigns sympathy for the families while members of his party gleefully identify themselves with the perpetrators.
The killings may have had no place in the republican struggle, but it seems the killers most certainly have one in Sinn Féin.
- Yours, etc.,
DEREK MOONEY,
Eglinton Wood,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.