Madam, - How can Fine Gael square its supposedly ardent pro-Lisbon Treaty position with the proposal by its TD Leo Varadkar for the voluntary repatriation of foreign workers?
I would have thought, given his own background, that Mr Varadkar would have been more sympathetic to the position of foreign workers in Ireland at this turbulent time.
Moreover, taxpayers' money (from both Irish workers and foreign nationals who work here) is too precious to be used to fund repatriation schemes from a supposedly pro-European and internationalist Fine Gael. This is as mad and as ill-conceived as Martin Cullen's e-voting fiasco, except this time there are souls involved, not machines.
Will the Fine Gael leader and the spokesperson on finance please make it crystal clear whether they support Mr Varadkar's proposal or not?
It seems the largest opposition party is an awkward umbrella brand for loosely-connected splinter groups of social democrats, Christian democrats, mavericks and careerists, with all the dangers that this could entail to the authenticity of Ireland's democracy given Fianna Fáil's seemingly everlasting supremacy.
- Yours, etc,
ANDREW GREANEY, Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Madam, - May I suggest a slight improvement to Leo Varadkar's laudable proposal to pay foreign unemployed workers a lump sum to return home?
Could the State instead make lump-sum payments to native unemployed (or indeed, employed) workers to persuade them to leave? In that way Mr Varadkar's aims could be met, while enhancing the quality and productivity of the labour force.
- Yours, etc,
HUGH LINEHAN, Churchfields, Milltown, Dublin 14.
Madam, - I agree with Leo Varadkar's suggestions that foreign workers should leave the country if they are unemployed. Let their own states take care of them.
Thousands of Irish people who lost work in England in the early 1990s had to return here (without financial handshakes from England) because getting another job over there could take months. If a person did get the dole in England, they couldn't possibly live on it, so Irish social welfare had to cough up, even if the returning person had been away for a few years.
The nature of immigrant labour in most countries is that people move on when it comes to an end; why should it be any different here?
- Yours, etc,
Dr FLORENCE CRAVEN, Maynooth, Co Kildare.