Cheek of TDs who can raise their own pay

WHO would be a politician these days... Well, I would that’s for sure. You only have to look at the obscene amount of money they pay themselves to see that.

At a time when we are being beaten over the head with tales of how this country is in for the mother of all financial headaches with a No-Deal Brexit and Minister Donohoe piously telling us all that payments have to be cut back thanks to his hairshirt Budget, the TDs gave themselves a pay rise recently that takes their salary to just shy of €100,000.

Just when you think you’ve seen and heard it all, they pull a stunt like this – when pensioners feel the cutbacks, when people struggle to pay rent and to keep food on the table, our brave politicians muck in with the rest of us by giving themselves a pay rise... and that money is before they put in claims for every ‘expense’ imaginable.

The ordinary worker in the street pays their way for lunches and transport, yet our politicians manage to get the taxpayer to stump up for this, too.

We’re being taken for fools, but that’s okay because all those selfsatisfied TDs know that that is exactly what we are. We’ll moan and we’ll snipe, but we’ll take it... just like we always do. MICHAEL PAGE,

Dublin 7

Vote out selfish FG

NO increase for pensioners because of financial limitations due to Brexit. This criteria does not apply to TDs who got an increase recently and will get another in October 2020, this will be a total increase of over €60 per week.

Politicians are very good at looking after their own interests. It seems the pensioner’s only way of responding is through the ballot box. Fine Gael TDs have good reason to fear a general election probably in the middle of next year.

JOHN CURLY, Lucan, Co. Dublin

Fuel hike will hit hard

THIS Budget and the increase on fuel will hit commuters hard in their pockets where there is no public transport in rural areas – the people who could not afford to buy a house in Dublin due to inflated prices and have to work in the capital travel thousands of miles a week to make a living.

This increase will hit fishermen and the transport service who are on the roads day and night.

Inflated rents on the rental sector, home help only an extra six hours a week and using Brexit as an excuse to fleece the working class of this country! We need feet on the street again to show this Government up for what it is. NOEL HARRINGTON,

Kinsale, Co. Cork

Early risers forgotten

I ALSO get up early every morning like the people Leo Varadkar refers to when he’s feeling superior.

As a pensioner I have worked and paid taxes all of my life in a time when to be young was to have some degree of respect.

Today I get as up early as 6am, being of an age when duty calls from the little room along my landing. Leo and his cohorts certainly did not have all early risers in mind for this budget. It is becoming trendy to tell older folk to sit and be quiet and get out of the way. Pension Extinction. ROBERT SULLIVAN,

Bantry, Co Cork

Betrayal of the Kurds

THE Kurdish people have been betrayed so many times especially by Britain, France and the USA that they must be thinking, with friends like that, who needs enemies? Right now, they are surrounded by enemies and have the unenviable task of guarding tens of thousands of Isis and other terrorists and their supporters who may end up being released or escaping to resume their dreadful campaign of murder and mayhem. Meanwhile, our Irish Government remains silent while supporting US wars of aggression at Shannon airport. EDWARD HORGAN, Co. Limerick