Dear Editor, After reading Andrew O'Connell's Notebook article (IC 6/3/14) I went online to find out which national broadsheet newspaper had published the editorial to which he refers and to read the editorial itself. To my surprise, I discovered that the newspaper in question was not the one I initially assumed it was.
Things have come to a sorry pass when a supposedly responsible national newspaper editorialises to the effect that telling school pupils about sexual responsibility in the best sense of the term is somehow worse than Holocaust denial (which is illegal in some countries).
This prompts me to renew my suggestion, which I made in a letter you were kind enough to publish last December, that a major British quality newspaper with a genuine conservative/right-of-centre orientation, such as the 'Daily Telegraph', be encouraged to publish a special Irish edition with a similar orientation, especially in relation to social issues, given that the establishment of a purely Irish quality secular newspaper with such an orientation looks extremely unlikely anytime soon.
Such a newspaper is badly needed here and the editorial mentioned by Mr O'Connell, together with other recent newspaper editorials and articles on a variety of topics, shows that the need is becoming ever more urgent.
Yours, etc.,
Hugh Gibney,
Athboy,
Co. Meath.