Sir, - Ms Finola Bruton's article (December 16th) showed how discrimination against women in the home was continued sub rosa in the last Budget. The single income family was discriminated against by £30 per week compared to the double income family, even where there are children in the former and none in the latter.
It was stated last year that the objective was to force more women out of the home into the paid workforce. That is social engineering in which no government should indulge. Most agree that children are best reared by their own parents and many mothers in the workforce are there because of inflated rents and astronomical house prices which the Government has effectively done nothing to remedy.
What is surprising is that nobody to date has raised the unconstitutional aspects of Mr McCreevy's invidious discrimination. The State is constitutionally obliged to ensure that women are not driven from the home into the paid workforce by economic circumstances, a protective obligation more honoured in the breach than in the observance over the years. But deliberately creating a taxation regime with the practical effect and declared intent of driving the mother away from her family into the marketplace must be breaching the spirit and the letter of the Irish Constitution, if words mean anything. - Yours, etc.,
E. O Raghallaigh, Dalkey, Co Dublin.