Madam, - I see some Fianna Fáil councillors are still not getting the gist of the message sent to them by the electorate recently. Voter anger is not about the smoking ban.
It's about ministerial arrogance and political ineptitude. It's about money for horse-racing and none for the health service. It's about untouchable bankers and untouchable criminals. It's about the tribunal gravy train and Liam and Ray and Beverly. It's about a country that fought for 200 years to rid itself of the landlords, where now only a landlord can afford to buy a house. But most of all it's about an allegedly sophisticated electorate lumbered with mediocre political representation.
Having a fag in a pub won't cure any of that. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL DOLAN, Wilderness Grove, Clonmel, Co Tipperary.
Madam, - It has been an extraordinary week watching and listening to the rank and file of the Fianna Fáil party agonising over where it all went wrong. I and some others have been endeavouring to point out to them over recent years what the problem is. So, one last time lads, get comfortable and read carefully.
In the lust for power, the hierarchy hitched the party to the Progressive Democrats. (And if the truth were known, one or two of them would be very comfortable among the PD ranks). That party has a political philosophy straight from the John Wayne School of Social Justice. Caring is for wimps. To offer a hand to a fellow citizen who is having trouble keeping up is baloney. Grab what you can. Greed is good.
And in case you think that the position is being overstated, remember that two weeks before your election your Minister for Justice decreed that inequality is good.
Now if all of this was not enough to make the most devoted practitioner of parish pump politics scratch his head and wonder, get out the election results. Any will do. Irish electors have repeatedly and overwhelmingly rejected the PDs and what they stand for, 97 per cent of them in the most recent polls.
So there you have it: all your wonderings answered. - Yours, etc.,
JIM O'SULLIVAN, Rathedmond, Sligo.
Madam, - The letter from James Fitzpatrick (June 16th), predicting that Sinn Féin will in time inevitably regress against Fianna Fáil - as Clann na Poblachta, Fine Gael, the PDs and Labour did before - is unfair to SF.
Mr Fitzpatrick's baseline scenario could be interpreted in a very different way - namely that for more than 50 years Irish voters have been searching for a viable alternative to the Fianna Fáil monolith, but, for one reason or another, the alternatives have disappointed. Surely it is premature to be certain that the Sinn Féin alternative will inevitably disappoint too.
I have never been a Fianna Fáil supporter, but it is entirely reasonable to hold the view, on the evidence of recent years, that the party now represents a level of incompetence, arrogance, favouritism, corruption, greed and social divisiveness without parallel in the history of the State. These faults need to be purged to their very roots, and only a long period in the political wilderness might possibly achieve that.
Sinn Féin represents the radical option for the ever-increasing number who have been sidelined and overridden by the Fianna Fáil machine, and who now look to Sinn Féin for social justice and inclusion. No-one can, of course, be certain that Sinn Féin, given the opportunity, would necessarily succeed where others before have failed, but isn't there a chance, just a chance, that it might? - Yours, etc.,
R. MARTIN, Caran, Co Westmeath.
Madam, - The suggestion that the Government's humiliation in the recent elections was influenced by its preoccupation with the European presidency is both simplistic and inaccurate.
I believe the election results can be put down mainly to three things: stealth taxes, decentralisation and a failure to keep election promises, particularly in respect of the health service, which is in a worse state than when the Government came to power seven years ago.
Neither the European presidency nor its constitution were a subject for discussion on the doorstep during the election campaign and they are far from the minds of people who are on hospital waiting-lists and lying on trolleys. - Yours, etc.,
PADDY WYNNE, Bayside Walk, Sutton, Dublin 13.