Sir, - Your columnist Nuala O'Faolain, in her column of April 14th, looks at the issues raised in our documentary We Still Want You but . . ., which we made in association with Comhlamh. This will undoubtedly contribute to opening up the debate about sending development workers to the Third World.
Indeed, your appointment of a development correspondent will also help to ensure that Ireland will enjoy an informed public opinion about issues that are very difficult to raise here. As we found in making the documentary, going to the Third World is taken for granted as a noble and intrinsically good thing, and it is not polite to question it!
Our focus was in presenting the debate about sending "lay" development workers abroad. Your columnist, on the other hand, was also quite unambiguous in terms of her negative personal experience of Irish priests abroad working in the Third World. However, I would like to put on record that while Comhlamh and its members were not only perceptive, but brave, in undertaking this debate in Ireland (which she rightly acknowledges), many in the religious and missionary orders have been equally critical and courageous such as Fr Noel Kearns, a parish priest in Ballymun, who worked for over twenty years in Peru, and also featured on the programme.
In fact, a measure of that involvement can be gleaned from the fact that the Missionary Society of Saint Columban ("Columban Fathers") is one of the sponsors of the documentary! - Yours, etc.,
Producer/director,
"We Still Want You But",
Esperanza Productions,
BTT House,
56 Tritonville Road, Dublin 4.