A chara, - Regarding Micheal O Nuallain's letter (August 11th), adverting to the absence of a statue in honour of P.H. Pearse in O'Connell Street, permit me to put the following on record:
In 1978 I was invited to join an ad-hoc committee to organise a commemoration of the centenary, the following year, of the birth of Pearse. We submitted a miniature of a statue to be erected in central Dublin (excellently designed by the late Garry Trimble) to the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, with a price tag of £70,000 for the whole project. (The Central Statistics Office tells me that that sum amounts to £216,187 in today's money.)
Mr Lynch approved, with only one condition: that the IRA, then involved in bloody national conflict, would not be represented at the unveiling ceremony. On the proposal of its chairman, the majority of our committee rejected that condition and thus the whole project collapsed.
That chairman is now a Fianna Fail member of Oireachtas Eireann. - Is mise,
Donall O Morain, An Charraig Dhubh, Co Bhaile Atha Cliath.