Madam, - I read with some interest Fr Sean Healy's article "How to banish poverty and exclusion - and create new wellbeing" ( Opinion & Analysis, November 29th. Fr Healy believes we should increase the tax burden and increase the role of the State in a whole host of areas.
I believe that the policy nostrums advocated by Fr Healy would summon rather than banish poverty, increase exclusion and damage the well-being of the Irish people. Low taxation has been one of the key factors in generating Ireland's prosperity and enabling us to create the resources to invest in improved public services.
What Fr Healy is advocating is not a new approach. Ireland tried the policy of high taxation and State interference in the economy in the 1980s and a generation of young Irish people paid the price by emigrating. The way to tackle poverty and inequality is not to destroy Ireland's prosperity and make us all equally poor but to provide opportunity for those who can work and assistance for those who need it.
This State has made huge strides in the past 20 years; we do indeed live in a nation transformed. That transformation has been achieved in no small part because we ignored the siren calls of the left to increase taxes to fund bigger Government. I respectfully suggest that we continue to ignore such calls. - Yours, etc,
SEAMUS MULCONRY, Ballinatone, Greenane, Co Wicklow.