Labour Party did all it could to help the needy

DEFICIT denial is at the heart of Jim O’Sullivan’s analysis of the Irish Labour Party in government from 2011-2016 (Irish Independent, Letters, November 6).

With available social expenditure funding at a 20-year low and absolutely no access to the levels of increased State borrowing required, Labour ensured that what limited funding was available was directed to shield those in greatest need by immediately protecting core social welfare levels, and quickly restoring then increasing the national minimum wage.

This was deliberate targeting of the limited funds to where Labour believed it would do most good in a crisis.

Were Labour right or wrong to ensure core social welfare levels and the minimum wage? Did that not immediately help the most vulnerable?

Jim O’Sullivan seemingly would not have rushed to help the most needy and would have spent his limited funding elsewhere. He doesn’t say where, when or how. Instead he charges Labour with cutting funding that wasn’t there to cut and with failure to borrow additional funding that simply wasn’t there to borrow.

As a 75-year-old pensioner, I can from sheer experience assert such populist pandering is phoney politics and is not in Labour’s political arsenal. Getting Ireland back to work was Labour’s central anti-austerity strategy. With the help of the Irish people, that priority has worked and has been seen to work.

Labour won time for that strategy to work and, as it bore the fruit of increased State revenue, it was a Labour minister, Alan Kelly, who ring-fenced an immediate €4bn for the shift back to increased social housing provision.

Not even “deficiteers” like Jim O’Sullivan can deny it will take Labour politics in power to ensure that all housing expenditure currently available is directed to secure affordable housing for all in a highly-targeted programme of State housing. Brian Brennan Liberties, Dublin