Sir, - Your editorial (February 12th) clearly paints the broader canvas to Mr McCreevy's unseemly and unnecessary scrap with the EU Commission. We will pay dearly for it. The crucial economic issue now is our rate of inflation. If we continue to overheat the economy and devalue the euro in our pocket we will lose competitiveness both within and outside the euro. The soft option of devaluation will no longer be available and as we have so unnecessarily used up political capital in Brussels we could be faced with a hard landing to sort out on our own. - Yours, etc.
David Dillon, Blackrock, Co Dublin.