Sir, - It is ironic that Desmond Fennell's letter appeared on October 8th, the day after the Lisburn outrage. If I read him correctly, he was trying to say that because the IRA placed its weapons and bombs in a bunker, therefore they had decommissioned them. I hope that he is eating his words today, as any schoolchild can tell him that if weapons can be so "decommissioned", that is, stored, then they can be as easily be "commissioned" or brought out of storage.
It is highly likely that the bombs detonated in Lisburn by cowardly and immoral terrorists had been "decommissioned" in Fennell's term, in that the bombs or the materials which went to make them, had been stored somewhere before being made operable and transported to Lisburn.
In my view and that of many others, "decommissioning" weapons means taking them out of the geopolitical situation permanently. Else one has the situation where, just as Rome burned while Nero fiddled, Lisburn is bombed while Fennell quibbles. - Yours, etc.,
Ballygallum Road,
Downpatrick.