Madam, - Anyone who is considering transferring their vote from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael at the next general election should urgently read Richard Bruton's opinion piece in your Business This Week supplement of September 24th.
The Fine Gael spokesperson for finance outlines his party's commitment to zero waste of public funds, suggesting that the country's public service deficit is more a matter of how we spend our money than how much we spend.
This is typical from a party which has made an art form of being in opposition without criticising the Government, and which still hasn't realised that Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats are making a better job of being Fine Gael than Fine Gael ever did.
The provision of quality public services in Ireland is expensive relative to other countries because of decades of under-investment. For Mr Bruton to suggest that overflowing hospitals and derelict primary schools can be made to vanish by bean-counting and management-speak is simply ridiculous.
The inescapable truth is that our public sector is under-funded, not as badly as it used to be, but still under-funded.
Highlighting the kind of inefficiencies that are an innate part of public administration as an excuse for not addressing this problem is a poor excuse for policy - and fair warning that a Fine Gael brand of Government will look, feel and spend very much like the Fianna Fail brand we all claim to be so fed up with. - Yours, etc.,
GARRETH McDAID,
Kilmore,
Carrick-on-Shannon,
Co Roscommon.