Madam, – Brian Flanagan (August 5th) is right to point out that the proposed gagging orders for senior executives in Nama may effectively nobble comprehensive scrutiny of the agency. We despair of the rigours of the law ever being applied to what, in freer times, we used to call the ruling class. Transparency in the operations of Nama would however provide some little hope that something might be changing for the better in the governance of the State.
There is another unfortunate consequence of the gagging order. It sends the wrong signals to potential applicants of the kind of people that Nama will be employing. This whole debacle has been caused by the predominance of moral castrati among the media, politicians and economists, who remained silent (or who were downright misleading) while hard-working people were encouraged to pay ridiculous prices for ordinary houses in ordinary places.
We don’t need the same mindset in Nama. We know that politicians and public servants have been bought for buttons in the past; there are billions involved here. The gag has to be removed, lest we end up with the mother and father of all tribunals in 20 years’ time.
Madam, – Ray Doherty’s letter (July 29th) reveals his fortunate position in that his wife is alive, thus doubling his State pension income, although the bulk of his domestic outgoings are the same as mine, a widower. And his pension on his very early retirement was a generous index-linked income, from, would you believe, one of those well-loved, benevolent and paternal outfits – a bank!
What he is suggesting, from this privileged pulpit, is that the State pension be means-tested. For those of us without a decent private pension, let alone an indexed one, and who regarded the State payment as a prospective right, not a charity, when we were funding it through income tax at 77 per cent, this is a dismaying prospect. This pension is already taxed (unlike the children’s allowance), and is already effectively subject to the income levy (through the removal of the Christmas bonus, which is almost exactly equal to the 2 per cent levy), representing a sharp U-turn by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan since his October Budget position. We do not need any further softening-up of public opinion towards welfare cuts. We pensioners have suffered the cuts already.
A smaller tax than the pension cut (the €200 property tax) was dropped from €40,000 two-bedroomed centrally-heated mobile holiday homes following a loud two-day rant on the Joe Duffy show. But nobody speaks for the pensioners, other than Mr Doherty, the enemy within. – Yours, etc,