A chara, – Seana Glennon ("Citizens' assembly ideal forum to debate neutrality", Opinion & Analysis, March 28th) repeats the argument in favour of citizens' assemblies that they are more representative of the general population, in terms of broad demographic metrics, than Dáil Éireann. This is both obvious, as one is deliberately designed to be a population sample and the other is not, and meaningless.
On a deeply divisive issue such as neutrality, where public opinion falls into three broad camps (complete neutrality, Nato membership and military involvement on a case-by-case basis) these is no evidence of strong correlations between holding these opinions and metrics such as gender, age or geographical location.
With such a tiny sample, just 99 people, while it might be possible to ensure it is vaguely representative in terms of demographics, which may well make no difference anyway, there is still the high risk of it being wildly skewed in terms of attitudes to the matter under discussion, which definitely will strongly influence the outcome. – Is mise,
DAVE SLATER,
Kilkea,
Co Kildare.