Madam, – Your Editorial of March 17th is quite simply one of the most offensive I have read under your stewardship of what was once a great newspaper.
When times were good, entreaties that the spoils be more widely distributed were met with disdain – the time was not yet right, we were told, the fundamentals needed to be strengthened before things could be improved. Taking more in taxation from the super-wealthy would, somehow, stifle the innovation upon which the State depended.
For the seeming privilege of having a roof over their heads, families faced escalating costs. Repeated calls for more and proper funding for chronic illness, child disability and family services were callously rejected. A generation of vapid, spoiled Irish people was created, their cheerleaders the opinion writers, magazine and newspaper editors whose continual siren calls to materialism were the loudest “cultural” imperative for a decade.
The tribal leaders were the tax exiles, “Irish” people whose massive wealth somehow required them to become Portuguese or Monegasque or Dutch, so cheaply did they hold their nationality.
Now, of course. when times are not so good, somehow all this is forgotten. Those whose share of the Tiger was a massive mortgage on a shoddily built house in some desolate corner of the Dublin commuter belt are told to pay up. The damascene conversion to the idea of national identity of those who benefited most, as evidenced by your own Editorial, is one of the most repugnant aspects of the entire affair.
Why should fingers not be pointed? Why should the guilty, the bankers and the super rich not be required to pay first? Why should we listen to the demand that we share the pain, coming as it does from those who refused to share the wealth? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Everyone is feeling the pinch in these days of worldwide economic crisis. As always, though, it is the poor and the vulnerable who suffer most from the unfettered greed of Western commercial institutions. Throughout the “developed” world many people are paying with their jobs but in poorer countries the crisis is costing thousands of people, especially children, their lives.
Despite the promises made in the UN by prosperous nations, including Ireland, at the beginning of the millennium, almost half the world’s population, over 3 billion people, still live in poverty, ie on less than $2.50 a day.
Plan Ireland is primarily concerned with the welfare and development of impoverished children, a billion of whom live in poverty. Hundreds of millions of children do not have adequate shelter or access to safe water or health services. Almost 30,000 children under the age of five die needlessly every day.
The Government has made a number of cuts to the aid budget – the most recent €95 million – and it is feared that further cuts are being considered. We in Plan Ireland believe it is unconscionable to ask the silent poor of the developing world to shoulder any more of the burden. We appeal to those in power to resist the temptation to make further cuts. Enough is enough! – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Regarding Standard Poor’s recent downgrading of Irish banks, could anybody tell me why we should still be listening to such organisations? Were they not a key player in the whole credit-fuelled bubble which has now so dramatically burst?
If such organisations were now re-grading themselves, would we expect to see them in the upper three tiers, or might there be a more appropriate home for them further down their 1 to 10 scale? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Could we introduce a simple rule? No one in the State should be allowed to earn more than the President.
Any income, including pensions, which exceeds this amount, should be taxable at a rate of 100 per cent. – Yours, etc,