Joe’s powerful, harrowing story

Sir — I would like to compliment Joe Brolly on the article he wrote about Peadar Heffron (Sport, Sunday Independent, October 29), and to say thanks to Joe for opening my eyes and, I am sure, the eyes of many more readers, to the fact that tensions still exist between the Protestant and Catholic communities in the North of Ireland, and that these tensions can easily boil over if someone on either side of the sectarian divide is perceived to be in any way attempting to collaborate or integrate with the other side.

Joe described the intimidation that Peadar suffered from members of his GAA club and local Republican activists when he announced his intention to join the PSNI, and also described the horrific injuries he suffered after a booby trap bomb went off in his car seven years after joining the PSNI.

After reading this harrowing story, I immediately felt I was living in a bubble completely oblivious to the goings on up North. I was naive and thought a lot of this hatred had by now subsided and would certainly be well diluted with Peader Heffron’s generation.

I found it extremely difficult to comprehend how this young man could be subjected to such intimidation because, as he put it, he wanted “to help make this island one again”.

I think most of us down South would struggle to imagine our GAA clubmates subjecting any club player to what Peadar was subjected to. After all, for many of us, our club is like our family.

You could say Brolly’s article has provided the necessary reality check that, while the Troubles we became so accustomed to hearing about in the 1970s and 1980s are hopefully gone for good, there is still a certain amount of disharmony there between the two communities, which hasn’t and probably never will be fully erased.

What isn’t helping, of course, is the non-existence of a government in Stormont. Peadar Heffron paid a high price when he tried to help build peace.

Sinn Fein and the DUP should take a leaf from his book, and make a bigger effort to do what Peadar did and cross the divide and show that they can work together. Denis Guiry, Berrings, Co Cork