Sad to lose your seat, Aodhán? My heart bleeds
ON the TV and in the newspapers we have seen tearful ministers and tearful backbench TDs who lost their seat in the election.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Jerry Buttimer are just two among the many. It’s understandable that when you lose part of your income you would shed a tear.
Unfortunately, when Fine Gael and Labour voted to remove part of the income from pensioners, the unemployed, single parents, cut workers’ wages, robbed private pensions funds, cut child benefit, introduced house and water charges to those they knew couldn’t afford it and left the wealthy relatively untouched, not a tear was shed by any of them. They told us that tough decisions had to be made.
Now the electorate have made some tough decisions of their own and the ministers and TDs affected will just have to man up and deal with it like the electorate did.
DENIS DENNEHY, Dublin.
A drugs disaster
THE voters in Dublin Bay North have clearly rejected Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and his disastrous ‘drug injection centres’ planned for Dublin and, l ater on, throughout the country.
Isn’t the outgoing minister aware that heroin is illegal? How, therefore, can it be accommodated on State premises? Would the next step have been the legalisation of all class-A drugs and the decriminalisation of drug use? How catastrophic would that be? On behalf of all parents who have lost loved ones through drug abuse, I implore the incoming government to urgently re-examine Ó Ríordáin’s plan.
RICHARD TYNAN, Dublin 1.
Unhealthy State
REGARDING the article by Sebastian Hamilton on the health service (Mail, February 27): he suggests a report by independent consultants ( as i f we haven’t had enough reports), then goes on to mention a figure that would be considerably more than we pay now.
Yet according to recent official statistics we already pay proportionately more than all the other countries in the OECD for the health service.
In the past we paid proportionately far less for our health service, yet we spent far less time in casualty and far less time on waiting lists than we do now.
Many workers now get less than they did in the past.
For instance, student nurses no longer get paid for the first three years. This is just one area where workers get less than in the past.
The HSE then goes and spends a considerable amount in areas that have nothing to do with health.
DAVID KELLY, Crumlin, Dublin 12.
Europe needs Britain
I PERSONALLY do not know what would happen if Great Britain exits the EU. What I do know is that it would hand over control to Germany and France.
The recent negotiations Mr Cameron had in the EU show that consensus is possible and that Britain still has a lot of friends there. Let us remember also that the cream of British youth, over a million of them, gave their lives to free Europe from the German yoke.
I will never forgive Charles de Gaulle for blocking Britain’s entry to the EEC, as it was called then.
This was despite the fact that de Gaulle was safe in Britain while young British soldiers were sacrificing their lives defending his country, the ingrate.
Mr Cameron is quite right in trying to get the EU back to what it was originally designed to be, an economic community and not a political one.
The EU needs to go back to the drawing board, and the first thing to do is get rid of the unelected overpaid pompous bureaucrats.
The next thing to deal with is the way that MEPs are elected.
At the moment anyone can be elected an MEP, but MEPs should only come from members of the democratically elected government of a nation, otherwise they might not represent the wishes of their government.
The steady hand of Britain is badly needed on the tiller of the EU.
JOHN FAIR, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
An idiotic strike
LUAS drivers are fools if they go ahead with their plan to strike over Easter weekend.
This is at a time when many thousands of people will be travelling to the city centre for 1916 commemorations. Many roads will be blocked off so it won’t be possible to drive.
I nstead of promoting t heir demands for a pay rise in a positive way and hitting their employer, this will turn the entire public against them. They cannot hold us all to ransom.
HELEN BYRNE, Wicklow town.
Unwelcome return
I THOUGHT it was the end of Michael McDowell when he lost his Dáil seat back in 2007 and ungraciously walked out on his party. But now he’s back seeking a Seanad seat. Irish politics is better off without his tiresome presence.
A. TYNAN, Dublin 15.