Kenny and decentralisation

Madam, - My usual regard for the paper of record was lessened considerably by your Editorial of January 7th criticising Fine …

Madam, - My usual regard for the paper of record was lessened considerably by your Editorial of January 7th criticising Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny's approach to the crucial issue of decentralisation - and by your subsequent publication of a mean-spirited and sanctimonious letter from Andrew Greaney (January 10th).

Mr Greaney's stout defence of the much-abused term "national interest" seems to extend to only one county in Ireland - Dublin. We are a 26-county nation, for now, and none of the other 25 counties is any less deserving or capable of hosting a major cog in the mechanism of the State's administration.

Enda Kenny's point, like the rest of the Dáil Opposition, is that this worthy and truly national project has been badly handled, ill conceived and fundamentally jeopardised by its botched implementation. However, in my opinion it is still worth implementing in the best possible way.

I will no doubt raise Mr Greaney's hackles with more "parish pump" politics by discussing my native Cavan. I don't care. This is a county where 2,184 people continue to be unemployed, many of them young people. Average annual incomes in the county are some €2,000 lower than the national average after nearly a decade of economic boom. After five years of Fianna Fáil/PD Government, Cavan people actually earned less disposable income per household in the 2002 census than in the 1996 census.

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Although Cavan features in the National Spatial Strategy there are no commitments whatever to the town or county in terms of new roads, such as the badly needed Sligo-Dundalk link. The M3 motorway through Co Meath will be tolled twice. There is no railway into the Border region nor any plans for rail. Cavan Hospital must also take Monaghan patients, leading to chaos in the A&E and potentially more needless death.

Decentralisation of the Department of Communications, the Marine and Natural Resources to Cavan Town was unveiled in 2002 and promised for 2007. Since then a clearer timetable has always been another press release away, and now the optimistic estimate is for 2009.

We in Co Cavan demand and need a new government and a new Taoiseach in Enda Kenny to deliver fresh energy, honest answers and new ideas to our forgotten county and the wider BMW region. I certainly look forward to being his standard-bearer in the next general election. - Yours, etc,

SEAN McKIERNAN Jnr, (Fine Gael National Executive), Bailieborough, Co Cavan.

Madam, - Andrew Greaney's letter of January 10th is insulting to Mr Enda Kenny TD, leader of Fine Gael, and I wonder why you published it. Mr Kenny is an elected person, and how many votes he secured at the last election is irrelevant. Even the great Winston Churchill, who pulled Britain through the second World War, was thrown out at its end .

It is sometimes said that Mr Kenny should follow a Tallaght-type strategy as leader of the Opposition. Look at what that did for Alan Dukes. And what is the Government's policy really?

It seems that it is only Fine Gael that should always put the national interest first and remain in opposition in perpetuity! - Yours, etc,

BRIAN McCAFFREY, Clifton Crescent, Galway.