Sir, - The large chamber was flooded with sunlight. (I wouldn't have called it a chamber then - I was nine and that would have been considered a rude word). But it was the chamber where the Seanad sat and still does sit, and it was my first visit to Leinster House, and I was spellbound. Senator Desmond FitzGerald (Garret's father) was holding open the door for my mother, my sister Maev and for me. I was wearing my new red lined dress with large white daisies on it - a dress I particularly liked - partly because Maev had not got one the same! I gazed into this very large room through whose dome the sunshine was pouring. We had walked over wonderful Dun Emer carpets to get to it - carpets of Celtic grey-blue with scrolled patterns at the borders, patterns of serpents and beasts like in the Book of Kells. Solemn phrases like "the foundation of the State" hung in my mind and assurances that my father had contributed much to this throbbed proudly inside me.
I noted another family friend, Sir John Keane, taking a peaceful nap there after lunch. How could he snooze in such an important setting? Outside there stood the cenotaph with Daddy's plaque engraved upon it. What a day!
But now I sometimes am a revisionist. The magic of the State's foundation raised questions - the unforgettable tragedy of the North's recent decades casting deep shadows over this century. Perhaps they should have waited longer - those eight young men standing in City Hall with the ruins of one administration coming down about their ears and preparations for the new one barely beginning. Perhaps they should have waited a while, cooled their hot young blood, settled for Home Rule. Perhaps? Could we now put the whole century in mothballs, amnesty our past and look into the faces of our children, not our ancestors? - Yours, etc., Una O'Higgins O'Malley,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.