Varadkar got it wrong over double jobbing row
I APPLAUD Colette Browne for her article (Irish Independent, December 4) in which she asks why a homeless boy is in court over stealing a €1 drink while TD Dara Murphy takes €94,525 in salary and a further €51,600 in expenses and when, instead of carrying out his duties as a TD, he was fully involved in an incredibly lucrative job in Europe.
To add insult to injury, none other than the Taoiseach stated that “his main job has been a European job in the past two years and he has done this extremely well”.
No, Leo, his main job is as a representative of the people in his constituency.
A singular position that we fought for in a bloody war 100 years ago.
If this is what Varadkar really believes, then he should be made to resign immediately and never show his face again.
Plus ça change, plus la même chose. Why have the ordinary people of Ireland suffered over the centuries when they are still being subjugated and exploited by those in power who care not a fig for them and only exist for their own sordid purposes? Ciarán Clarke
Co Fermanagh
JOHN Downing (Irish
Independent, December 5) wrote a piece with the headline: “Suddenly, the Taoiseach finds himself placed with an avalanche of problems that he must turn around.”
Personally, having been watching from afar, the day Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach, he merely took up where the ‘two little boys’ Kenny and Noonan left off.
Varadkar made exactly the same mistake as Enda Kenny, he relied on the advice of Fine Gael HQ, which is so out of touch with the people on the ground, it cannot even get a candidate in Sligo – my home county – to stand for the party at the next general election.
As far as I’m concerned, Fine Gael has sold its soul to Mammon, merely to feast with the billionaire class, whilst overlooking it is the Government of, and for, the Irish nation at large.
The obscene waste of money on the children’s hospital, the inane decision to site the new National Maternity Hospital on a Roman Catholic-owned property, the absolute disgrace that homelessness is, and the dithering manner in which new social housing is being built, beggars belief. I won’t mention the printer, nor the invisible Fine Gael TD.
Sadly, Varadkar is in exactly the same place that Liam Cosgrave and Brendan Corish were in 1977. That the report of a completely empty ballot box in the recent by-elections did not result in immediate action, serves to illustrate to the electorate at large that this Government is on the way out.
No matter what happens with Brexit, Ireland faces challenging times.
Add in the likelihood of Trump being re-elected, even more so.
The big question then for Fianna Fáil is: “Will you modernise, or return to the days and ways of Fianna Fáil in the past?” Surely, as Ireland approaches the centenary of statehood, things must change. Declan Foley
Berwick, Australia