How dare they waste our taxes on €6k rugs?

I HAVE just read in disbelief ‘The €56m price of diplomacy’ (MoS, July 15) and I cannot for the life of me understand how our Government can authorise such spending of public money.

Is it really necessary to spend €6,266 on two rugs?

I’d want my whole house carpeted for that and have money left over. It seems to me that money paid in taxes by the ordinary individuals in this country is spent on luxuries at the top whilst our homeless, health services and education services are in dire straits.

Does it ever occur to our Government that the people who pay their taxes are living on a day-to-day basis with no money for luxuries.

When is all this unnecessary spending going to end?

Mary Hebron, By email.

Brexit confusion

THE recent proposals in the UK government’s white paper seek to solve the Brexit issues by reaching an agreement with the EU that retains the free trade facilities for goods.

It retains to themselves the financial services, legal controls and independence to arrange trade deals with whoever they wish. In the opinion of Theresa May’s plan, no new borders are needed anywhere.

Believe that and we are in for a big letdown. There is no chance that the EU will allow the UK to keep all the benefits of free trade but not be part of the administrative unit that is the EU.

If it does, it means the UK can keep its European markets intact but also agree trade deals with any country without including the EU in those deals.

It also would mean that countries outside the EU could sell unrestricted into Europe by selling via the UK. And the EU would have no protection either from volumes, quality, safety or value because the UK can make their own rules and regulations.

It would mean the borders into the EU would be leaking via the UK. What the UK wants to do is to pick and choose the good parts but avoid the not so good, keep all the benefits of the EU without being part of it.

If UK politicians get their way, what is there left of the EU? Any other member could turn around and say, ‘If the UK can do it, then so can we.’

To permit what the Chequers paper suggests is impossible because it would mean the end of the EU as we know it, as envisaged by the founding Treaty of Rome and the several treaties that made the EU what it is today. There is no soft option. The UK will have to make some serious concessions to get any deal that allows the free movement of goods and people.

Northern Ireland is a valuable trading coin. Without the DUP it would have been sold down the river a long time ago.

John Colgan, Fairview, Dublin 3. …In recent weeks we have heard Tory Brexiteers repeatedly telling us they do not want a hard border in Ireland and Theresa May has reaffirmed this. We have been repeatedly advised that it’s a matter for the Republic to take up with Brussels if the EU insists on a hard border.

One of the principle planks of the pro-Brexit campaign was control of immigration and the UK’s borders.

As a member of the remaining EU 27, there will continue to be freedom of movement between Ireland and the mainland European members of the EU. Without a hard border, anyone in the Republic will be able to cross the border and then cross to Britain.

How can the UK guard against this without either a hard border or passport control between Northern Ireland and the mainland UK?

Tom Burke, Clonsilla, Dublin 15.

Slip of the tongue?

WE THOUGHT British prime minister Theresa May said ‘backstop’. She meant ‘backstab’. When will it sink into the Irish psyche that Perfidious Albion always has and always will mean Perfidious Albion?

Fran O’Brien, Carlow.

Heartless GAA

The GAA refusal to allow the playing of a tribute match for Liam Miller is scandalous. If the GAA needs to call an emergency committee meeting, it could easily do so. Have its chiefs no heart, no compassion?

Margaret Walshe, Dublin 15.

Áras dream job

WHY would Michael D Higgins not want to go for a second term as President? Five-star accommodation, five-star pension and five-star allowances, not to mention a five-star salary. Meanwhile, the PAYE workers paying for his generous lifestyle are screwed for every last cent they earn.

Workers on the average industrial wage paying the higher rate of tax springs to mind. Maybe we should close down the Áras and put the next president in an ivory tower.

Tommy Deenihan, Blackrock, Cork.