Sir, – Do people realise what repaying the Anglo Irish promissory notes means for the average person? For the 1.8 million people in employment, paying €3.1 billion a year amounts to an average additional tax burden of €1,722 per annum, or €144 a month every month for the next 10 years. That is on top of the cost of bailing out all the other banks and our normal tax bill to pay for hospitals, etc.
For most people in employment this is impossible, so others will have to cough up multiples of those amounts. Who in their right mind thinks that this is sustainable? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – May I suggest a more appropriate Latin aphorism to Ollie Rehn (Front page, March 14th) to summarise European Commission policy towards Ireland’s debt obligations: Vae victis – “Woe to the vanquished”. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pactum appellant (with apologies to Tacitus). – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Regarding the letter of John A Murphy (March 15th), surely it must be “Pactasuntservanda:DelendaestHibernia”? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I fail to understand why the Government feels it had to guarantee the bondholders in Anglo. It is high time that the unions, businesses, employees, unemployed, and the elderly should tell their TDs that they will not tolerate taking on Anglo’s debt to bondholders. Call a mass rally . . . storm government buildings, revolt!
Quite simply, with respect to the bondholders, They gambled. Their horse fell. Tough! We will not accept the risk for something that we didn’t gamble on. By all means, guarantee the deposits, but not the speculators. – Yours, etc,