Madam, - Referring to a newspaper report headed "Massive salaries at UCD revealed", Prof Tom Begley justifies salaries of €200,000 or more by comparing them with what is available to top academics in the US ("Paying for a knowledge economy", Opinion Analysis, September 19th).
While he accepts that €200,000 is "a lot of money", he says the cost of living in Ireland here deters to the very people the university seeks to attract.
Prof Begley might just look a little closer to home for his comparisons. While he struggles to manage on €3,846 a week in our little high-cost state, men his own age, single and unemployed, are struggling as well, on €187 per week. Every week the good professor is getting 20 times more money and he makes a case for his entitlement to it. Our man on the dole has to fight for his, while being viewed as a sponger.
Who is to say what accident of natural selection or opportunity landed one man in a high-paid job and the other with next to nothing?
I suggest a dose of moral conscience, humility and harsh reality might sober those at one end of the scale and assist those at the other. - Yours, etc,
JOHN MALLON,
Mayfield,
Cork.