Ian Paisley to step down as First Minister and DUP leader

The Rev Ian Paisley's "absolutely historic role" in restoring devolved government to Northern Ireland was hailed last night as he announced he was to step down as the province's First Minister and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

Mr Paisley, who will be 82 next month and who has led the DUP for nearly 40 years, took the post of First Minister last year following the suspension of Stormont rule for five years. He will step down this May, after one year in the job.

Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, led the tributes to him.

"He played an absolutely historic role in ending the deadlock and establishing permanent devolved government and deserves enormous credit for the courage and vision he showed," Mr Hain said.

"I am sure that the decision he has taken will be the best one for his family, as a very close family man. I wish him all the best for the future."

Former prime minister Tony Blair said: "Ian Paisley's contribution to peace, after all the years of division and difference, was decisive and determinative.

"In short, in the final analysis, he made it happen. The man famous for saying No will go down in history for saying Yes."

Mr Paisley decided to go after mounting pressure from within his party in recent weeks to stand aside.

His son, Ian Paisley jnr, resigned as a junior minister in the Northern Ireland Executive last month after criticism over his links to the developer Seymour Sweeney and controversy over lobbying activity.

Speculation followed that senior party members were unhappy about the subsequent appointment Mr Paisley jnr to the province's policing board.

But Mr Paisley denied the controversy had prompted his decision to step aside. "I never even considered it. I felt that my son was very badly treated," he said.

"I am not a fool – people who thought they could get at me, got at him. They thought they could damage me by the damage they sought to take out on him, but that did not move me."

Mr Paisley, who is staying on as an MP and MLA for the North Antrim constituency, will quit as First Minister and DUP leader after an investment conference in Belfast organised by the Stormont power-sharing executive.

He said: "I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going to come after the conference.

"I thought that it is a marker, a very big marker, and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out."

It is widely expected that his deputy, Peter Robinson, will succeed him. However, in typically robust fashion, Mr Paisley insisted the decision would be made by DUP members. "This is not the Church of Rome," he said. "This is not apostolic succession, and I have no right to say who will succeed me. The person will succeed me when the mark is on the paper and the ballot is cast.

"Whoever that will be will have my support and encouragement and if he wants to take my advice, he will get that advice if he asks for it. But I will not be sitting like Putin in Russia saying to the president, 'This is the way you have to go'."

Background Ian Paisley was born in Armagh, County Armagh and brought up in the town of Ballymena, County Antrim, where his father James Kyle Paisley was an Independent Baptist pastor. His Scottish mother Isabella Paisley was instrumental in his evangelical conversion at the age of six. After completing his education at the Model School in Ballymena, he went to work on a farm in Sixmilecross, County Tyrone. During this time he felt that he received a vocation to enter the Christian ministry. He undertook theological training at the Barry School of Evangelism (eventually renamed the South Wales Bible College which was later replaced by the Evangelical Theological College of Wales), and later, for a year, at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Hall in Belfast. Founding of the Free Presbyterian Church In 1946 he was ordained at a ceremony in the independent Ravenhill Evangelical Mission Church on the Ravenhill Road, Belfast. Four ministers from four different denominations performed various roles in the service but some have questioned whether they had ecclesiastical authority from their churches to participate. In the early 1950s permission for Ian Paisley to use Lissara Presbyterian church in Crossgar, County Down for a Gospel Mission was revoked by the local presbytery. In conjunction with the Lissara Kirk session Ian Paisley helped to establish the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster at Crossgar, County Down. Following a vote in his own church he joined the Free Presbyterian Church and was subsequently elected the second moderator of the new denomination, a post he held for several decades until he was replaced in January 2008 by Rev. Ron Johnstone. His September 2007 announcement that he was standing down followed press reports of controversy in the Free Presbyterian Church over his political role as First Minister of Northern Ireland. Paisley eventually set up his own newspaper in February 1966, the Protestant Telegraph, a strongly anti-Catholic paper, as a mechanism for further spreading his message. He has authored numerous books and pamphlets on religious and political subjects including a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Paisley's use of the title 'Dr' derived initially from a 1954 qualification from the (outlawed) American Pioneer Theological Seminary in in Rockville, Illinois. Later this was somewhat legitimized by an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree awarded by Bob Jones University, a Christian college in Greenville, South Carolina. Bob Jones, Jr. was a close personal friend and, with Paisley, a leader in evangelical Christianity. Paisley continues to maintain a friendly relationship with the institution and has often spoken at the University's annual Bible Conference. Democratic Unionist Party The Democratic Unionist Party was established in 1971 by Ian Paisley and Desmond Boal. It is currently the largest party in Northern Ireland and the fourth largest party in the United Kingdom in terms of representation at Westminster. In 1956, Paisley was among those invited to a special meeting at the Ulster Unionist Party's offices in Glengall Street, Belfast. Many Loyalists who were to become major figures in the 1960s and 1970 also attended, and the meeting's declared purpose was to organise the defence of Protestant areas against anticipated Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity, as the old Ulster Protestant Association had done after partition in 1920. The new body decided to call itself Ulster Protestant Action (UPA), and the first year of its existence was taken up with the discussion of vigilante patrols, street barricades, and drawing up lists of IRA suspects in both Belfast and in rural areas. Even though no IRA threat materialized in Belfast, and despite it becoming clear that the IRA's activities during the Border Campaign were to be limited to the border areas, Ulster Protestant Action remained in being (the UPA was to later become the Protestant Unionist Party in 1966). Factory and workplace branches were formed under the UPA, including one by Paisley in Belfast's Ravenhill area under his direct control. The concern of the UPA increasingly came to focus on the defence of 'Bible Protestantism' and Protestant interests where jobs and housing were concerned. As Paisley came to dominate Ulster Protestant Action, he received his first convictions for public order offences. In June 1959, a major riot occurred on the Shankill Road in Belfast following a rally at which he had spoken. In the 1960s, he campaigned against Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O'Neill's rapprochement with the Republic of Ireland and his meetings with Taoiseach of the Republic, Seán Lemass, a veteran of Easter 1916 and the anti-Treaty IRA. He opposed efforts by O'Neill to deliver civil rights to the minority nationalist community in Northern Ireland, which included the abolition of gerrymandering of local electoral areas for the election of urban and county councils. In 1964 his demand that the police remove an Irish Tricolour from Sinn Féin's Belfast offices led to two days of rioting, after this was followed through (see Flags and Emblems Act – the public display of any symbol which could cause a breach of the peace was illegal until Westminster repealed the Flags Act in 1987). Paisley's approach led him in turn to oppose O'Neill's successors as Prime Minister, Major James Chichester-Clark (later called Lord Moyola) and Brian Faulkner. In 1969, he was jailed along with Ronald Bunting for organizing an illegal counter-demonstration against a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in Armagh. He was released during a general amnesty for people convicted of political offenses. British Government papers released in 2002, show that in 1971 Paisley attempted to reach a compromise with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The attempt was made via then British Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend. The papers show that Paisley had indicated he could "reach an accommodation with leaders of the Catholic minority, which would provide the basis of a new government in Stormont." It appears that the move was rejected once it became clear to the SDLP that the deal would favour the unionist majority. Speaking about the deal in 2002 Paisley said: “     The SDLP did not want to go along the road that we would have wanted them to go. I wouldn't say there were talks, there was an exchange of views between us, but it never got anywhere. We were prepared to try and seek a way whereby we could govern Northern Ireland and that people of both faiths could be happy with the way it was being governed, but it all rested on the key point — the person with power would be the person that the people gave the power. ” Paisley opposed the 1972 suspension by the British government of Edward Heath of the Northern Ireland parliament and government (known metonymically by the term Stormont due to the location of Parliament Buildings on the Stormont estate). He opposed the Sunningdale Agreement which sought to rework relationships between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and which provided for a power-sharing executive (government) involving both communities in Northern Ireland, and a controversial all-island Council of Ireland linking Northern Ireland and the Republic on a legal but not constitutional level. Sunningdale collapsed following the Ulster Workers' Council Strike, which cut water and electricity supplies to many homes, and the failure of the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees and the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to defend the power-sharing executive. Supporters of Paisley played an important role in orchestrating the strike. In January 1974, he (Paisley) was subdued and thrown out of the Stormont Assembly by members of the RUC. In April 1977, Paisley famously declared he would retire from politics if a forthcoming United Unionist Action Council general strike was unsuccessful. The strike failed, but Paisley did not keep the promise. Political life In the 1970 UK general election Paisley was elected the member of Parliament (MP) for the North Antrim constituency which he has retained since then and is now the longest serving MP from Northern Ireland. The following year Paisley established the most successful and longest lasting of his political movements, the Democratic Unionist Party which replaced his Protestant Unionist Party. It soon won seats at local council, provincial, national and European level; Paisley was elected one of Northern Ireland's three Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) at the first elections to the Brussels and Strasbourg-based European Parliament in 1979, holding a rare, triple mandate, as an MEP, an MP, and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). On his first day he attempted to interrupt the then President of the European Council Jack Lynch, but was shouted down by fellow MEPs. During the course of an address by Pope John Paul II to the European Parliament in 1988, Paisley accused the Pope of being the Antichrist (see Historicism), repeatedly interrupting the Pope's speech by shouting and holding up placards. Paisley was removed from the chamber by other MEPs. He easily retained his seat in every European election until he stood down in 2004, receiving the highest popular vote of any British MEP (although as Northern Ireland uses a different electoral system to Great Britain for European elections, the figures are not strictly comparable). The DUP also holds nine seats in the British House of Commons and has been elected to each of the Northern Ireland conventions and assemblies set up since the party's creation. For a long time it was the principal challenger to the major unionist party, the Ulster Unionist Party (known for a time in the 1970s and 1980s as the Official Unionist Party (OUP) to distinguish it from the then multitude of other unionist parties, some set up by deposed former leaders). In December 1981 the United States State Department revoked his visa, citing his "divisive rhetoric". In the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the DUP overtook the UUP, achieving thirty seats to the UUP's twenty-seven, and in the 2005 UK General Election, achieving almost twice their vote share and taking nine seats to the UUP's one (successfully unseating then UUP leader David Trimble). 'Ulster says no' In the 1980s Paisley, like all the major Unionist leaders, opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Dr. Garret FitzGerald. The Agreement provided for an Irish input into the governing of Northern Ireland, through an Anglo-Irish Secretariat based at Maryfield, outside Belfast and meetings of the Anglo-Irish Conference, co-chaired by the Republic's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The Unionists objected due to the fact that the Agreement was imposed on the people with no referendum, and to the notion of a foreign government "interfering" in the affairs of a part of the United Kingdom. Sinn Féin also objected. A rally of protesters, numbering an estimated 200,000 people, met in front of Belfast City Hall after a campaign dubbed after its slogan "Ulster Says No". The rally, which was addressed by Paisley and then UUP leader James Molyneaux, passed off peacefully but was ignored by the government. On December 9, 1986, Paisley was once again ejected from the European Parliament for continually interrupting a speech by Mrs Thatcher. In 1985, he and the rest of the Unionist MPs resigned from Parliament at Westminster in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement and were, all but one (Jim Nicholson, who lost his seat to the Social Democratic and Labour Party's Seamus Mallon), returned in the resulting by-elections. In 1995, he played a part in the first standoff over marching at Drumcree, County Armagh between the Orange Order and local residents of the Garvaghy Road. The march passed off after the decision was made by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) to allow it and Paisley ended the march hand in hand with David Trimble who appeared to perform a "Victory Jig". This "Victory Jig" was seen by some as an act of triumphalism. The Belfast Agreement / The Good Friday Agreement Paisley's DUP was initially involved in the negotiations under former United States Senator George J. Mitchell that led to the Belfast Agreement of 1998. However the party withdrew in protest when Sinn Féin, a republican party with links to the Provisional Irish Republican Army,[14] was allowed to participate after its ceasefire. Paisley and his party opposed the Agreement in the referendum that followed its signing, and which saw it approved by over 70% of the voters in Northern Ireland and by over 90% of voters in the Republic of Ireland. Although Paisley often stresses his loyalty to the Crown, he accused Queen Elizabeth of being Tony Blair's "parrot" when she voiced approval of the Agreement. The claim is reflective of the current custom in the United Kingdom of the Monarch reflecting the position of the government, never publicly contradicting official government policy. As part of the deal, the Republic altered the controversial Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland, which had originally claimed its government's de jure right to govern the whole island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland. The DUP fought the resulting election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, to which Paisley was elected, while keeping his seats in the Westminster and European parliaments. The DUP took two seats in the multi-party power-sharing executive (Paisley, like the leaders of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Féin chose not to become a minister) but those DUP members serving as ministers (Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds) refused to attend meetings of the Executive Committee (cabinet) in protest at Sinn Féin's participation. Compromise and First Minister After a number of stop/starts the Executive and Assembly were ultimately suspended in October 2002 amid unionist unhappiness on the nature of Provisional IRA disarmament and the alleged discovery of a Republican spy network operating in Stormont. During fresh elections in 2003 Paisley and the DUP campaigned on the need for re-negotiation of the Belfast Agreement and emerged from the elections as the leading party entitled to the position of First Minister with Sinn Féin taking the Deputy First minister position. Paisley was now in the driving seat and continued to refuse to accept Sinn Féin in Government, and the British Government maintained the suspensions of the institutions. His party entered negotiations with the Governments and the other parties on the steps required and the changes needed to the agreement. The December 2004 Comprehensive Agreement upheld the principles of the Belfast Agreement but foundered on the DUP demand for photographic evidence of IRA decommissioning. Following IRA disarmament in September 2005, the Governments set deadlines for the DUP and Sinn Féin to agree on a new Executive, with the alternative being direct rule from London and Dublin. In the October 2006 St Andrews Agreement, agreed on his fiftieth wedding anniversary, Paisley and the DUP agreed to new elections, and support for a new executive including Sinn Féin subject to Sinn Féin acceptance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. This reversed decades of Paisley opposition to Sinn Féin such as his comments on 12 July 2006 in Portrush, following Orange Order parades when he said, "[Sinn Fein] are not fit to be in partnership with decent people. They are not fit to be in the government of Northern Ireland and it will be over our dead bodies if they ever get there." Sinn Féin did endorse the PSNI, and in the subsequent election Paisley and the DUP received an increased share of the vote and increased their assembly seats from 30 to 36. On Monday 26 March 2007, the date of the British Government deadline for devolution or dissolution, Paisley led a DUP delegation to a meeting with a Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams which agreed on a DUP proposal that the executive would be established on May 8. Later in April, Paisley met in Dublin with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and publicly shook his hand, something Paisley had refused to do until there was peace in Northern Ireland. On May 8 power was devolved, the Assembly met, and Paisley was elected as First Minister of Northern Ireland with Sinn Feins Martin McGuinness as the Deputy First Minister. Speaking at Stormont to an invited international audience he said, "Today at long last we are starting upon the road - I emphasise starting - which I believe will take us to lasting peace in our province." Paisley and McGuinness subsequently established a good working relationship and were dubbed by the Northern Irish media as the "Chuckle Brothers." Religious views Paisley promotes a highly conservative form of Biblical literalism, which he describes as "Bible Protestantism". The website of Paisley's public relations arm, the European Institute of Protestant Studies (ianpaisley.org), describes the Institute's purpose as to "expound the Bible, expose the Papacy, and to promote, defend and maintain Bible Protestantism in Europe and further afield." Paisley's website describes a number of doctrinal areas in which he believes that the "Roman church" has deviated from the Bible and thus from true Christianity. These include the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Paisley claims on his website has given rise to "revolting superstitions and idolatrous abuses", the veneration of saints and the Virgin Mary (excessive and not Biblically supported, in Paisley's view), and the institution of the Papacy, which Paisley believes has no biblical foundation. In 1988, when Pope John Paul II delivered a speech to the European Parliament, Paisley shouted "I Denounce you as the AntiChrist!" and held up a red poster reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST" in black letters. John Paul continued with his address after Paisley was ejected from the auditorium by fellow MEPs. Denunciation of Pope John Paul II by Ian Paisley He has claimed in an article that the seat no. 666 in the European Parliament is reserved for the Antichrist. He preaches against homosexuality and supports laws criminalising its practice. He and his organisation have publicly spoken out against what he views to be blasphemy in popular culture, including criticism of the stage productions Jesus Christ Superstar and Jerry Springer: The Opera. On at least one issue, Paisley shares views with his Catholic counterparts: he opposes legal abortion. Though often at political odds with the Republic of Ireland, he has some religious followers in the Republic. It was specifically in his religious capacity that he first agreed to meet the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Paisley revised this stance in September 2004, when he agreed to meet Ahern in his political capacity as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. Known for a sense of humour, at an early meeting with Ahern at the Irish embassy in London, Paisley requested breakfast and asked for boiled eggs; when Ahern asked him why he had wanted boiled eggs, Paisley quipped "it would be hard for you to poison them", much to Ahern's amusement. Relationship with the SDLP From the 1960s, one of his main rivals was civil rights leader and co-founder of the nationalist SDLP, John Hume. Though their parties are often at loggerheads, Hume and Paisley worked jointly on behalf of Northern Ireland in the European Parliament and on occasion worked jointly in the House of Commons. Indeed the complexity of their relationship was demonstrated when it was discovered that Hume had visited Paisley's home to dine with Ian and his wife, Eileen, on Boxing Day (26th December) one year in the 1990s. John Hume tells the story of the occasion when he said to Ian Paisley, "Ian, if the word 'no' were to be removed from the English language, you'd be speechless, wouldn't you!" Paisley replied, "No, I wouldn't!" Having spent most of his career, as he himself jokingly admitted once, saying 'No', Paisley assumed the chairmanship of the Agriculture committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly created by the Belfast Agreement, where he was praised (even by Sinn Féin members with whom he worked) as an effective, coordinating chairman. The Minister for Agriculture, Nationalist SDLP's Bríd Rodgers, remarked that she and Paisley had a "workmanlike" relationship. Defender or demagogue? His critics see his work in the European Parliament and in Stormont of late and argue that he could have been, had he so wished, one of the greatest builders of a new inclusive Northern Ireland. To his supporters, Ian Kyle Paisley is seen as a passionate and brilliant defender of the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. They argue that he stood up for unionists who were under attack from nationalists from the Republic of Ireland and from British governments willing to give away "unionist rights" and ignore unionist fears to placate nationalists and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. To some, he is seen as the wrecker whose extremism almost destroyed Northern Ireland. To others, Ian Paisley is the great defender, the protector who saved Northern Ireland from "Rome Rule" and "Dublin rule". To his opponents however, including some unionists, Paisley is seen as a demagogue, a crude rabble-rouser who spent his political career saying 'no' and being passed by; "no" to O'Neill's reform, "no" to contacts with the Republic, "no" to Sunningdale, "no" to the convention, "no" to James Prior's rolling devolution, "no" to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, "no" to the Belfast Agreement. By them he is seen as a uniquely destructive influence whose extremism lost potential friends and helped alienate people outside Northern Ireland sympathetic to unionism. Paisley has never accepted any culpability for any violence, despite his many fiery speeches, which often presented the political conflict in stark Biblical terms as a millenarian battle between good and evil (see Historicism). In September 2005, he was criticised for stoking unionist violence in Belfast over the 75-metre diversion of a provocative Orange Order march along a thoroughfare serving as a boundary between nationalist and unionist communities. Quoted by The Guardian newspaper, he called the diversion "the spark which kindles a fire there could be no putting out". Widespread loyalist riots followed, producing, among other results, what Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain called "serious attempts to kill police in some instances". Save Ulster from Sodomy "Save Ulster from Sodomy" was a campaign launched by Paisley in 1977, in opposition to the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform (Northern Ireland), established in 1974. Paisley's campaign sought to prevent the extension to Northern Ireland of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which had decriminalised homosexual acts between males over 21 years of age in England and Wales. The campaign failed when legislation was passed in 1982 as a result of the previous year's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Dudgeon v. United Kingdom. Personal life Ian Paisley married Eileen (née Cassells) on 13 October 1956. It was announced on 11 April 2006 that Eileen would be one of three DUP politicians to be created a life peer. She sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords. They have five children, three daughters Sharon, Rhonda and Cherith and twin sons, Kyle and Ian. Three of their children have followed their father into politics or religion: Kyle, into the church; Ian is a DUP assemblyman; and daughter Rhonda a retired DUP councillor and artist. He has a brother, Harold, who currently preaches the Gospel in the United States and Canada. Recent events At the age of 78 he retired his European Parliament seat at the 2004 elections and was succeeded by Jim Allister. However, he again retained his North Antrim seat in the 2005 UK general election. In 2005, Paisley was made a Privy Councillor, a post to which he became entitled as leader of the fourth largest political party in the British Parliament. In 2007, aged 81, he became First Minister of Northern Ireland. Upon the death of Piara Khabra in June 2007, Paisley became the oldest sitting British MP. In September 2007, he confirmed that he would contest North Antrim at the next General Election as well as serving the full four years as first minister stating "I might as well make hay while the sun shines." In January 2008 he was replaced as moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster by the Rev. Ron Johnstone. On 1 February 2008, Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, travelled to Ballymena to meet First Minister, Ian Paisley, and open a resort and spa. On March 4, 2008 Ian Paisley announced his intentions to stand down from the post of First Minister for Northern Ireland in May 2008. Support for Ian Paisley’s criticism of the Roman Catholic media From The Burning Bush Dr. Ian Paisley At the end of August 2007 , Dr. Paisley criticised the press for its exaggerated statements regarding his health. He blamed “Romanists” in the media. This brought some criticism including a letter in the Belfast Telegraph from a man who believed that Dr. Paisley should apologise for his remarks. Here is an interesting response to the letter. It appeared in the “Belfast Telegraph” of October 9th. “COLIN ARMSTRONG (Writeback, October 5) thinks Ian Paisley should apologise for describing some journalists as Romanists. In fact, Mr Paisley merely hits at the tip of the iceberg. There is hardly a newspaper in southern Ireland which does not have at least one priest or bishop in the traps, not to mention those drafted in from the country on the straight basis of being religious. As one who has worked in journalism and still holds an NUJ card, I can vouch for the following facts: • Almost all Irish papers have, up to recently, a religious columnist (a “father trendy”), invariably from the dominant Roman Catholic Church. • Many agony aunts are ex-nuns. • Many commentators (particularly on ethics) are priests and ex-priests. • Almost all papers have Catholic staff-appointments made on the basis of their religion, or because they are ex-priests or ex-nuns, or their relations are in religious orders. • The universities and colleges of journalism were (and are to some extent) run by ex-priests or their seconds. • Similarly, RTE is governed by a large religious input, not just from top and middle-management but from rent-a-crowd Jesuits, Opus Dei and CORI and spotters after the hide of irreverent people like Dermot Morgan. (It will be recalled that Dermot Morgan, Father Ted, had to emigrate to England for a living. RTE had carved him up. Why? Because he was the first man to hold up to the Irish people an alternative view of Irish parish priest in all his powerful penitential. Why is it that all Irish religious comedy is enjoyed only in England, and never in Ireland?) The weekend after Mr Paisley’s first comment on Romanist journalists, not less than six people, very close to knowing precisely the truth of what he meant, made fun of his remarks. But not one took his remarks seriously enough to analyse how the Press in the Republic, including commentators on radio and television, is really constituted. SEAMUS BREATHNACH, Rathmines, Dublin.