Your news raises my blood pressure

Sir — Reading the Sunday Independent is bad for my blood pressure.

On one page I read about a homeless child eating his dinner off a piece of cardboard at the side of the road. Simon Coveney is outraged, but not sufficiently outraged to do anything.

Brendan O’Connor writes elegantly about the Taoiseach’s laissez-faire attitude to mental health issues.

On another page, I read that county councillors who get on to the Dail gravy train, are “compensated” with a “parachute” payment by the taxpayer to the tune of around €36,000. Compensated for losing their council job and getting an infinitely better-paid one?

One of these lucky chaps described the outrageous lumpsum payment as ‘peanuts’ as he has to pay tax on the largesse. My heart breaks for him. By all accounts he won’t even have to attend the Dail as someone will press the voting button for him.

Is this what passes for democracy in Ireland 2019? Yes it is. Somebody call 999, I’m about to explode.

Gerard Barrett,

Sandyford, Dublin 16