Sir, – Your editorial review of the past year, "Politics in 2017: A year of living dangerously" (December 27th), warns of a "possible need to control public consumption, by increasing taxes, to prevent the economy overheating" and concludes by asking if we are returning to the "slippery slopes last visited in 2006". Ominously, you predict that our "politicians, facing an election, are unlikely" to do the right thing and put up taxes. I sincerely hope that you are wrong.
Have our politicians not learned from past very traumatic mistakes?
They need to, finally, put the long-term public good before selfish short-term electoral advantage. Surely, for once, and at last, we can rely on the new generation of political leaders, who dealt so impressively with the challenges of Brexit at the end of 2017, to do the right thing in 2018?
Or am I guilty of being hopelessly naive? – Yours, etc,
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JOE McCARTHY,
Arbour Hill,
Dublin 7.