Sir, – Your columnist, Fintan O’Toole, lauds Phil Lynott as a model for the youth of Crumlin to the detriment of Conor McGregor, (“Crumlin does not need McGregor’s lethal idiocy”, Opinion, December 12th).
According to O’Toole, Lynott “was a genuine working-class hero: cool, sophisticated, quietly courageous . . .” McGregor’s behaviour is, however, “all part of the gangsta image” that the latter “seems determined to foist on his native place.”
Phil Lynott was undoubtedly an extremely talented musician. It is, however, widely acknowledged that he had a very serious drug-abuse problem and that this problem contributed significantly to his early death at the age of only 36. Is a premature drugs-related death the ideal which your columnist wants to place before the young people of Crumlin?
O’Toole is free to idolise Phil Lynott if he so wishes. He owes it to his readers, however, to give the full picture concerning an individual whose life came to such a tragic end. – Yours, etc,
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PAUL GULLY,
Clontarf, Dublin 3.