Madam, - Dr Garret FitzGerald, in his column of January 6th, referred to "the greatly increased inequalities that Fianna Fáil have allowed to distort our society, making it one today of the most unequal in Europe".
In his column of January 20th, he repeated this statement - saying that Fianna Fáil was "spurred on, I should of course have added, by the PDs" - and tried to defend it by claiming he was using statistics from "the 11 EU states with output and living standards similar to ours".
While there are disagreements as to what exactly the word Europe defines, I know of no agreed definition that refers to only 11 EU states. If words such as Europe can be defined to mean anything you wish, then indeed statistics can be used to prove anything you want. But the evidence produced by Dr FitzGerald does not even come close to validating the statement he made that Irish society was the most unequal in Europe. If you look at the EU publication The Social Situation in Europe (2004), Ireland is marginally more unequal than the European average and considerably more equal than Italy, Spain, Portugal, the UK, Estonia, Latvia or Greece.
As David McWilliams has pointed out, what we have seen in Ireland has been an explosive growth in the middle classes. Between 1996 and 2002 the middle classes grew by an astonishing 25 per cent. By contrast, the poorest class has shrunk by 29 per cent and the next poorest class by 8 per cent.
Dr FitzGerald disputes the connection between low taxes and employment growth. In 1997 unemployment was at 10 per cent. Indeed, in 1998 Mike Allen, Labour's current general secretary, wrote a book entitled Ireland's Jobs Famine and Its Aftermath.
Whatever else can be said about Ireland now, there is certainly no jobs famine. I agree with Dr FitzGerald that low corporation tax has been critical to our economic success. However, by lowering PAYE we have reduced the tax wedge - the difference between what an employer pays and the employee receives - and thus reduced the cost to an employer of employing someone. Dr FitzGerald says a low-tax strategy yields inadequate public resources. But Government spending in all of the social areas has grown dramatically - and spending on health has more than tripled since 1997.
Health spending was 15 per cent below the OECD average in 1997 and rose to 17 per cent above the average in 2003. Whatever the challenges in health, lack of resources is not one of them.
I do not pretend that Ireland is some new Eden. Growth has brought a new set of challenges, but I would much prefer to deal with the challenge of growth than with stagnation. Ireland is a much better country than when I left school in 1984 and the low-tax policies of the Progressive Democrats deserve much of the credit for Ireland's success.
I have a profound respect for the contribution that Dr FitzGerald has made and continues to make to public life and public debate in Ireland; I hope he will at some stage accept that the Progressive Democrats too have made a useful contribution to Irish society. - Yours, etc,
SEAMUS MULCONRY, Director of Policy, Progressive Democrats, Dublin 2.