Madam, -If I were Martin Cullen's PR adviser, I would counsel him not to be accusing some of his fellow citizens of "robbing money [sic] from taxpayers" (The Irish Times, July 1st).
The memory of €50 million being spent on what some people with suspicious minds saw as an attempt to corrupt our electoral system is too fresh.
In addition, Mr Cullen's tirade against what he feels are misguided fellow citizens sounds too much like telling the croppies to lie down. He would be better employed bending his considerable intelligence to examining, for example, the feasibility of opening Baldonnel to commercial airlines to take the pressure off Dublin airport, as was suggested in your Letters columns yesterday.
Another idea floated in your Business section on integrating private and public transport also needs exploration.
So there is plenty of work for Mr Cullen to do - and no need for him to waste time berating fellow citizens, however misguided he may feel they are. They probably think they are exercising their democratic rights and therefore, in their view, not wasting taxpayers' money at all. Probably Mr Cullen would say the same about the money spent on the electronic voting machines. That's the problem with democracy.
Citizens are liable to have all kinds of opinions. Ministers, however, have to serve, however ungrateful they feel the rest of us are. - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.
Madam, - I wish to express my anger and disgust at Martin Cullen's comments on RTÉ news on Thursday. Offering gratuitous insults to people who care enough about their heritage to go to the expense and effort they did to try to preserve it makes him a disgrace to his office and to his country.
The current Government seems to care very little for any aspect of this heritage and it is only because the ordinary people of Ireland continue to fight the battle against unrestrained development (from which some individuals make vast sums of money) that at least some of our heritage has been preserved. The Minister's "fast-track" plans for the autumn seem to be intended to take even that power away. Democracy? I don't think so.
It ill behoves any Fianna Fáil politician to comment on others "robbing the taxpayers", considering that badly stretched PAYE workers in the 1980s were paying for a Fianna Fáil leader's shirts. - Yours, etc,
JACQUES LE GOFF,
Emmet Road,
Inchicore,
Dublin 8.