Sir, – The new offer of free GP care to six and seven year olds – irrespective of the income of the family they come from – is unacceptable. This care has to be paid for some how and so it amounts to an effective stealth tax on single people, who receive no benefit from such a service.
While the full gauntlet of societal supports should be in place in any decent society, nevertheless this Government has in recent years introduced an enormous number of budgetary measures to aid only families – even those with substantial means – with single people left either out in the cold, or having to, as in this case, pick up the bill through general taxation.
Single people have bills and mortgages too, and represent an ever-increasing proportion of society. We cannot pick up the bill for every measure that supports only families, and our Government needs to be cognizant of this when developing its annual budgets toward more sophisticated means of funding family services that do not include an effective cost to single people. – Yours, etc
KEVIN NOLAN,
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Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.