Madam, – Tony Bromell (May 24th) challenges the “hindsight economists” in Fine Gael and Labour to point to “just one proposal in the past 10 years that called for a cut in public spending”. I cannot answer for Labour but if Mr Bromell wishes to consult the Fine Gael website he will find several: Streamlining Government (our plan to rationalise state agencies and quangos), Power to People (reforming and cost cutting at local government level) and NewPolitics (reforming and cutting cost of the political system). A quick search through the archives will remind him that we were the first party to call for the national wage agreement to be suspended, voluntary redundancies in the public sector, and the only one that called for many of the decentralisation projects to be halted.
There are indeed a lot of “hindsight economists” about the place but there are even more Fianna Fáilers trying to rewrite history. – Yours, etc,