WHO IS RUNNING IRELAND?

Dear Sir,

Who is running this country, Leinster House or Brussels?

If the answer is Brussels and you ask why, you may be told that we are incapable of legislating and enacting laws that can stand up to fair scrutiny. It seems that whether it is the probity of our politicians, the imposition of our liquor laws, the control of immigration and the issuing of driving licences, etc. we sail merrily into the doldrums.

When an issue arises and there is a choice between common sense and nonsense you can guess which way we go.

Good management is invaluable and priceless and all too rare here in Ireland, especially in State owned companies and those privately owned but subsidised with concessions.

Good management has the foresight to have something in reserve to offset the effects of any crisis’ that may be around the corner and not get caught out like our Minister for Finance who had nothing in reserve when his source of revenue from the housing boom dried up.

The effects of this fiasco are being felt by everyone. There is hardly a department under this government that has escaped having them. As ministers were shuffled about how many of them have managed to notch up more than one fiasco and still retain a ministerial portfolio?

You are now experiencing the outcome of their substandard management and the coffers are empty and there is no money to pay salaries, so job losses are inevitable.

Now take an ordinary TD who rakes in €200,000 (€95,000 salary and expenses and pension) per annum which is the equivalent of 10 low paid salaries of 20,000 of those disposable people with families and mortgages who will be sacked in their droves.

We have 43 constituencies and allow 2 TDs per constituency and sack the rest. The sacking of 80 TDs would pay for 800 jobs for lesser mortals. The payment for TDs expenses came to €20 million and was sanctioned for release ahead of such urgent matters as the Fermoy Flood prevention scheme.

Our Ned and his cronies in Dail Eireann made certain that the butter is not wasted on anyone else’s bread but their own.

Thank You,
Richard Prendergast,
Mondaniel,
Rathcormac.

ILL ADVISED ADVICE

Dear Editor,

So John Fitzgerald believes that a pre-emptive strike on Iran is necessary (The Avondhu, August 7).

Has he not seen the horrendous situation that has developed as a result of the last such action in the Middle-East, namely the ill-conceived and immoral Iraqi invasion? The inevitable result of the type of action suggested by Mr. Fitzgerald will be many thousands of deaths and injuries to innocent people in both Iraq and Israel.

He would be well-advised to stick with arguing against blood sports as it seems that international relations are beyond him.

Kevin Kerrigan,
Maidstone Road,
Horsmonden,
Kent.

THE GREEN PARTY SHOULD RE-INVENT ITSELF

Dear Editor,

The Green Party are asking members for feedback on the Lisbon Treaty. As a swing voter, I have been very willing to vote Green Party, subject to the party programme.

Since the despicable sell-out over the M3 and Tara, however, I am afraid they have zero credibility with me and anybody else who thinks the way I do. For the future, my best advice is for them all to resign from the Green Party and join the PDs, and for the Green Party to be reconvened with 100% different personnel.

As to the Lisbon referendum, it would be a mistake to think that we, the voters, ‘did not understand’ the Lisbon Treaty. Naturally, the legalese of the document itself was completely impenetrable: the ‘Information Leaflet’ we got through the door was staggeringly obscure.

No, we didn’t understand the legalese, but we could recognise a con when we saw one. No other country was to be allowed to vote on it. What does that tell us?

We also knew that it was virtually identical with the European Constitution that was being rejected by country after country until our masters hurriedly called off the scheduled elections. Political parties have no role in a referendum. The power goes directly to the individual citizen.

You had no right to be using your organisation to lobby either for or against. Referenda are on a completely different playing field from regular party politics. They forgot that to their cost. What we want is a partnership of independent nations. This has worked again and again in history.

Enlightened self-interest produces plenty of checks and balances. We do not want to find ourselves maneuvered into a faceless empire controlled by unelected Brussels bureaucrats, and a majority of Europeans now know that this is where they are trying to take us - in the small print, while trying to sell it as ‘the only way to prosperity’.

It is not true that the Irish politicians were lazy or preoccupied over the referendum. They wanted us to vote ‘Yes’ in our sleep. They knew that this treaty was designed to impose a centralised empire on Europe by stealth. The more the voters heard about the reality, the more they decided to vote No.

No amount of tinkering at the edges will any longer obscure the fact that the treaty would have granted itself the power to make further changes at will, of unlimited scope, without any further democratic ‘interference’ from the voters. Have they actually read any of this treaty themselves and did they not spot this paragraph, buried in the middle?

The undemocratic spirit is alive and well in the EU politicians who are still repeating that the treaty cannot be re-negotiated - meaning that it must be rammed through regardless of the democratic vote. It must now legally be abandoned.

We, the sovereign nation of Ireland, have played our honourable part and voted in a democratic way. The EU must now accept the prior commitment to honour a democratic rejection. That’s what elections are for, remember? And no, we do not want to lose our Irish Constitution - without which there would have been no vote here at all.

Mise le meas,
M O Fearghail,
Loreto,
Sallybrook House,
Glanmire,
Co. Cork.