Sir, – Donal McGrath has a flawed understanding of what forced austerity is, in his castigation of the EU for its role in Ireland's bailout ("A bailout in an hour of need", July 7th). Ireland was not forced to do anything at that time. Instead it agreed to conditions that were laid down in return for keeping the lights on, our teachers, nurses, police, firefighters and civil servants paid a substantial amount of their pre-austerity salaries, and our State (as opposed to private) pensions maintained. Forced austerity is when a nation runs out of money to the extent that it cannot do any of those things, as happened in Argentina in 2001.
The poor quality of the argument made by Mr McGrath is further illustrated by the fact that he feels it necessary to bring forward something that might or might not happen in the future (“probably at the cost of another round of austerity“) in order to bolster it. – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS McKENNA,
Windy Arbour,
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Dublin 14.