Sir, – I am flattered that James Mackey (Rite and Reason, July 5th) has devoted almost a full column to disparaging my recent speech to the World Atheist Convention. However, his critique is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. If he had bothered to read my speech in full, or if he had bothered to attend the conference, he would have known that I said: “Over the last three years, all our gods have been crumbling – the sacred texts that declared Fianna Fáil to be the natural and imprescriptible party of eternal government; the high priests of economic punditry who assured us that the economy was sound and that there would be no property crash just a ‘soft landing’; the infallible oracles who promised – indeed swore to us on holy texts – that the bank bailout would be the cheapest in history and that the IMF were not just about to come in – all of these have now been exposed as shams.”
As everyone in the audience understood, I was speaking about the collapse of the Irish economy – and the “sacred texts” of neo-liberal economics. But clearly the subtlety and irony of my argument was lost on Mr Mackey. – Yours, etc,