Sir, – Tommy McKearney is extraordinarily ill-informed if he thinks that Monaghan and neighbouring Border counties have been neglected by the EU ("Ex-IRA men: United Ireland? It's all guff", Weekend Review, April 8th).
In fact, many hundreds of millions of euro in EU Peace and Interreg money created a community development sector from almost nothing in the Southern Border counties, as well as funding a wide range of economic development, ex-prisoners, women’s, youth, health, educational, environmental and tourism projects.
The Dublin and Belfast governments may have neglected the Border region, but the opposite is true for the EU. Through its generous cross-Border funding programmes, the EU was the best thing that ever happened to the Irish Border region. I know a little about this, having been deeply involved in this Border region co-operation for 14 years as director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh. – Yours, etc,
ANDY POLLAK,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.