Sir, – I hold my former colleague and your occasional Brexit columnist Bobby McDonagh in high regard, having served with him in the Department of Foreign Affairs since the beginning of our European adventure some 45 years ago.
So it is with great respect that I believe his views on our nearest and dearest neighbours veer towards being lopsided on occasion, notably in his article "Internal British bloodletting is the biggest worry of the Brexit blame game" (Opinion & Analysis, April 8th).
While we can agree that the European Union has been a beneficial experience for Ireland, it is easy to sleep on another man’s wound.
We have not paid out billions for our membership; we have been in credit up to recently.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
We did not, as a country, make the supreme sacrifice of going to war against Nazi tyranny and its allies for a second time in two generations, receiving little gratitude from the French in return.
And our history was at the other end of the colonial spectrum, making it much easier to accept the shared sovereignty of European Union membership and to mock our former colonial masters.
Nor do I believe that the benefits of EU membership can be defended solely by recourse to the “Great European Peace Project” argument alone; if we follow that logic we should have surrendered our much-prized neutrality and to have joined both Nato and to advocate for a European army, as so many of our EU partners do (although I sometimes suspect that is the road on which we are, in fact, already travelling).
My support for EU membership is determined by our actual and potential economic and social development.
In that context, I believe there are lessons to be learned from the Brexit experience by all EU member states, both collectively and individually. There are certainly challenges to be faced and reforms to be implemented, as our President has often alluded to in his discourses to date.
It is all too easy to be smug about the views held by Leave supporters, to condemn them out of hand as Little Englanders, as your distinguished columnist Fintan O’Toole does. These are people who, like many of your readers, hold their views, rightly or wrongly, based on their patriotism, and expressed through the ballot box.
It requires courage to reach out in dialogue to the DUP rather than the Alliance or the SDLP, to the European Research Group rather than to the Labour party, to Scottish Conservatives rather than to the SNP, but our own future is bound up with the full spectrum of British society; much easier to criticise those we see as part of the problem, not the solution.
Likewise, the EU has been intent on deterring any further secession act from less community-minded members, lest it fatally damage the European ideal.
But it is vital for our future, and that of the European Union, to extend the hand of friendship to all groups in the UK, not just to those with whom we may share a sympathy.
Mocking is catching and, in this case, distinctly unhelpful. – Yours, etc,
DÓNAL DENHAM,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Aren’t these repeated extensions just another Brexit serial? – Yours, etc,
PATRICK
O’CALLAGHAN,
Wicklow.
Sir, – As we edge closer to the Brexit cliff edge, I, for one, would be more assured if Michel Barnier had said that the EU will stand beside, rather than behind, Ireland. – Yours, etc,
RITA
O’BRIEN,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Benjamin Disraeli said: “I hope the time will come when a party framed on true principles will do justice to Ireland, not by satisfying agitators, not by adopting in despair the first quack remedy that is offered from either side of the House, but by really penetrating into the mystery of this great misgovernment, so as to bring about a state of society which will be advantageous both to England and Ireland, and which will put an end to a state of things that is the bane of England and the opprobrium of Europe.”
Isn’t it amazing that a quote from a House of Commons debate on the Irish question in 1843 can seem strangely applicable in today’s Brexit question. – Yours, etc,
AIDAN O’HARA,
Longford.