Sir, - Joe Glackin’s catalogue of Ireland’s shortcomings (Letters, August 10th) makes for rather depressing reading. One might almost conclude, after reading it, that Ireland is a country on the brink of collapse. It isn’t.
Of course we have problems. Some are serious, some are shameful and we should never be complacent about them. Children waiting too long for surgery, people struggling to find a home and staff being abused or harassed are not matters to be brushed aside.
But there is another Ireland which seems to have been overlooked in this litany of despair.
We are one of the most prosperous, peaceful and stable countries in the world. We effectively have full employment and a comprehensive social welfare system. We provide free access to education, a health service that despite its very real failings, delivers an extraordinary amount of care every single day. In general, people in Ireland enjoy a remarkably high standard of living.
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Perhaps we should occasionally acknowledge the thousands of things that work rather than endlessly catalogue the things that don’t.
Take the HSE. It is entirely legitimate to expose its failures, particularly when those failures cause real suffering. But the daily work of tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, porters, administrators and others, caring for hundreds of thousands of people, rarely makes the headlines. We hear about the worst 1 per cent, but we seldom hear about the remarkable 99 per cent who do a magnificent job.
We have become remarkably good at talking ourselves down. Every failure becomes evidence of national incompetence, every difficulty becomes proof that the country is badly governed, every statistic is deployed to demonstrate that somewhere else is doing better.
Perhaps Glackin is right about one thing: we should ask questions. But we should also ask a different question. What are we doing right? The answer is: quite a lot.
Ireland is not perfect, but what country is? There is a difference between holding our Government to account and constantly running Ireland down.
We need fewer pub-talk ramblings about what is wrong with the country and more recognition of what is right with it. We have so much to be proud of. - Yours. etc,
GEOFF SCARGILL,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
