No longer citizens, just customers

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (June 4th) comments on “the Abranisaton of the State” as a highly determined project whereby customer care – not citizen care – rests in the hands of private, secret offshore entities, ie, the outsourcing of public services for profit.

This policy would be bad enough if the profit were to remain in this country, but while low-paid employees perform the necessary tasks on the ground here, the real profits go out of the country to unknown external profiteers.

This is, indeed, all part of the neoliberal agenda that takes advantage of stricken economies (and sometimes even deliberately engineers a crisis as described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine) to advance policies resulting in the impoverishment of many and the enrichment of a few.

Surely it is time to halt those policies before there are more student grant application and creche debacles? – Yours, etc,

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WILLIAM J SILKE,

Grattan Road, Galway.