Madam, – Bobby Power (February 2nd) states that “the vilification and personal insults that Brian Cowen has had to endure in recent months should not have to be endured by anyone” and agrees with Dick O’Sullivan (Home News, January 31st) that, “If we in this country are not respectful and do not respect our leaders, we do not respect ourselves”.
I disagree. Our parliamentary system made Mr Cowen Taoiseach. Respect and authority can only be earned by the individual. He was afforded every opportunity. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Writing as someone who considers himself a decent person of Irish ethnicity and a member of the “silent majority” to which Dick O’Sullivan presumably refers in his recent hagiographic tribute to the departing taoiseach and ex-leader of Fianna Fáil, I would like to put on record the fact that Mr O’Sullivan does not speak for me.
Moreover, I would like to put on record that I believe this country has been betrayed, utterly betrayed, by the worst parcel of rogues that ever led a nation over a precipice, to wit (or rather witless), Fianna Fáil and the Greens. I have no respect for any member of those parties, in fact I despise each and every one of them for their betrayal of this once-proud State and nation to cowardice inhumanity and rapine.
Mr O’Sullivan, as an unelected and one assumes extremely well paid employee of a semi-State body is, in my opinion, impertinent in the extreme to presume he speaks for me.
I speak for myself, and as the large part of my income is now seized by this Government and State in order to pay the private gambling debts of their cronies and controllers, as well as the gilded pensions and golden parachutes of those who have brought us to such a pass, I feel entitled to express my healthy and total disrespect for them and all their works and pomp.
Good riddance to Mr Cowen. He sat way too long for any good he and his cohort might ever have done. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It angers me to think that just because a politician is retiring, we should now feel some sort of sympathy for him. Especially when he is leaving with such a generous pension, and while so many others in this country are suffering and simply trying to survive.
I chose to return to education in my mid-20s because to have the career I want, I knew it had to be done. Over the past four years I have spent just short of €20,000 doing that. For what? I cannot find a job in the field in which I have trained.
It is not that think I am owed a job. I understand that you have to work to get to where you want to be. I have interned. I am networking, meeting and talking to as many people as possible whom I think could help. But the result is the same. There is no work in this country and I will more than likely have to move to London or elsewhere soon.
So when people say we should feel some sort of sympathy for Brian Cowen as he leaves office, it makes my blood boil. Brian Cowen was Minister for Finance before he became taoiseach. He accepted the poisoned chalice from himself, and he chose to throw it into the gutter. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Brian Cowen quoted the blind poet Raftery. If the same Mr Raftery were here today, Brian Cowen and Micheál Martin would cut his blind pension. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Brian Cowen leaves politics insisting that his integrity and good name are intact. While this is admittedly a rare achievement for a Fianna Fáil politician, it is a sad indication of the standards expected in Irish politics that he seems to consider this an accomplishment. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Brian Cowen quotes John O’Donoghue in his parting address: “may you be hospitable to criticism, may you never put yourself at the centre of things, may you act not from arrogance but out of service”. Inspiring words indeed, but is Mr. Cowen really so deluded and disconnected from reality that he actually believes this is how he acted and will be remembered? Surely this was the worst government in our country’s history. Its legacy is a shameful one and it will be decades (if ever) before the damage it has inflicted will be undone. – Yours, etc,