Madam, - Recent correspondence on healthcare and similar issues reflects overwhelmingly our discontent with the result of current Government policies. However no real reform is likely while the electorate persists in returning candidates who mainly subscribe to a similar approach.
Perhaps the underlying reason lies in the Celtic fondness for fairytales, our favourite being the oft-repeated political fable that funding for the best of healthcare, housing, local and social services can be obtained from a mythical crock of gold. When the impossibility of this becomes apparent, governments resort to indirect taxation and off-balance-sheet borrowing to mask the resultant gaping void.
As the Tiger loses his stripes, PPPs (Profit before People Propositions) have been revealed as SSSs (Sad and Shady Scams). We find that, as usual, the eventual losers are young families at the base of the housing ladder and older folk unable to afford the rapidly increasing costs of private health insurance. The recipients of the massive tax breaks which drove this untenable system are laughing all the way to their offshore accounts.
While I differ radically from Minister for Health Mary Harney, I nonetheless respect the consistency of her disastrous views. Would that a socially responsible and fiscally adequate doctrine had as able an advocate in the Oireachtas.
As long as the voters appear to think that, as the Irish phrase has it, "Is cuma ná asal é duine gan seift" (someone without a shtroke is but a brute beast) it seems unlikely we shall see such a one.
- Yours, etc,
MILO KANE, Bettyglen, Dublin 5.