Madam, – I agree wholeheartedly with Gemma Hussey’s view (Opinion, May 4th) that our proportional representation system is no longer appropriate to our needs as a modern European state, and with Stephen Collins’s remarks bravely made earlier in the same direction.
This sacred cow promotes cronyism and waste of energies and abilities among our political class. Further, it hopelessly handicaps that group in providing the leadership it should be giving in helping our society mature to a greater sense of individual and collective responsibility and confidence, with all the benefits that would flow therefrom.
Whatever about the veracity of the theory that the UK left this State with PR as a means of ensuring Irish governments would be forever weak governments, an electoral system which results in the first minister opening tennis clubs must be fundamentally defective. I do not know which is the best system for this country, be it lists, d’Hondt, first-past-the-post or something else entirely, but let us please have an informed and unafraid political debate on installing something better than our current inheritance. – Yours, etc,
Madam, The current economic situation in Ireland calls for dynamic leadership and the courage to make some fundamental changes. One major change I would like to see would be the reduction of the number of our TDs to just 26 – one for every county in the State.
Then we could start to reduce the number of councillors, etc. We need these kind of dramatic changes and I believe that they would have enormous support from the vast majority of the Irish population. – Yours, etc,