Men are hit by the pensions scandal as well
I AM very worried about Fianna Fáil’s posture on the egregious pensions injustice implemented by Fine Gael/Labour and defended by the current Government.
They couch it in terms of a women’s issue, which ignores the fact that well over a third of those affected are men.
I am one of these. I worked for a couple years in Ireland in the 1970s, before going overseas to study and work for some 20 years.
When I returned in 1999 I got a job in Ireland and worked till my retirement (forced by government public service policy) in 2016.
Combining my earlier earnings with those after my return to Ireland, I had well over 20 years of PRSI paid. An American colleague of mine arrived in Ireland the same year, 1999, and worked till I think 2011. That’s 12 years. In other words, I worked on for five years after he had retired, having also worked here for years before he came to Ireland.
This American colleague, despite having much fewer contributions, receives a full Irish State pension. Though I have nearly double his contribution, I receive only 85%.
It’s worse, because my wife, who is my dependent, also has her payment reduced to 85%. We lose about €50 a week, or more than €2,000 a year, because of Joan Burton’s extraordinary decision, one now ratified by Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty.
Ms Doherty’s talk of fixing this in 2020 – but only for those retiring after then – is unacceptable. It represents an anti-women, antimen and anti-elderly policy, which surely could not stand scrutiny by an external court.
‘We have been stealing from you and will keep stealing from you’ is what it amounts to.
DAVID BARNWELL, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath.
We can’t stay silent
EXPOSING the truth with regard to wrongdoing often imposes costs on the whistleblower and can be dangerous.
The other side of the coin is that staying silent and failing to expose wrongdoing allows the wrongdoing to continue and may put many others in danger.
The child abuse scandals in Ireland continued for so long because many people who knew about these abuses remained silent. The recent exposure of widespread sexual abuse of women is to be welcomed, but we must also condemn the failures by far too many to expose the abusers.
This criticism applies especially to men, because women who were abused were usually in a position of disempowerment. Many women have also been killed by their abusers and the failure to expose these abusers has been a factor in these murders.
The appalling murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is a reminder of the ultimate price some whistleblowers have to pay for exposing very serious corruption and abuses of power.
Veronica Guerin suffered a similar appalling fate in Ireland. Those of us who become aware of abuses of power must be prepared for the reality that exposing these abuses will likely have costs for us, and we must expose these abuses regardless of these costs – otherwise far greater costs will be inflicted on others by our silence. EDWARD HORGAN, Castletroy, Limerick .
FF ard fheis is pointless
WHAT’S the point of a Fianna Fáil ard fheis? Hard-working and engaged party members gather to debate the policy issues of the day with a view to charting the party’s way forward.
However, votes taken at the ard fheis are utterly meaningless, as party policy is actually decided by the leader and a close coterie of like-minded senior party colleagues and advisors. The ard fheis voted overwhelmingly not to interfere with the rights of unborn children as enunciated in the Constitution.
But then on Wednesday night not a single Fianna Fáil member on the Dáil Abortion Committee voted to retain the 8th Amendment, predictably ignoring this decision. So what exactly is the point of a Fianna Fáil ard fheis?
Perhaps it’s simply another example of our political masters putting on a circus to create the illusion of inclusion.
BRENDAN CONROY, Dublin 14.