No more style over substance

■ Watching our Taoiseach address the European Parliament I, for a brief moment, felt proud to be Irish, until I realised I had been sucked in by what passes for modern-day Irish politics.

This ‘American light’ sanitised approach is all about presentation and optics, but little about substance, forced into our homes through the ever-expanding conduit of social media. Proud to be Irish until I realised the country the Taoiseach refers to doesn’t actually exist.

We have a healthcare system bursting at the seams, where we talk, not about people, but trolley numbers. A failed, under-funded psychiatric service, which seems unable to explain why so many suffer depression and unfortunately take their own lives. A society where our elderly face the frightening prospect of a lonely retirement on a meagre pension knowing the system of home help they now require is run by accountants who don’t understand the words love and compassion.

Is this the kind of society we want, or should some of the old core values be encouraged and nurtured? So, I would say to our Taoiseach as he starts to build his legacy, please ensure the foundation stones of our new Ireland, and the legislative changes required, make us all proud and contain equal amounts of love, empathy and compassion, for without them society as we know it cannot exist.

Eugene McGuinness Co Kilkenny