Madam, - Taoiseach Brian Cowen has publicly confessed that the money to fund pay increases for public service employees and elected representatives will be borrowed! The profligacy and insensitivity of our ruling elite is shocking. No sensible household or business would contemplate such an irrational action.
As well as putting us deeper into debt, the Government is actually jeopardising the jobs of its employees. These pay increases also further increase our budget deficit above the EU limit of 3 per cent of GDP and, when added to the Government's failure on the Lisbon Treaty, will ensure that we have few friends in Europe.
Most civil servants are heavily insulated from the recession. They have secure jobs and superior working conditions, including defined-benefit pensions index-linked to the current job-holder's salary.
For a start there should be a freeze on all Government, local authority and semi-state charges.
Secondly, there should be a 10 per cent earnings reduction for all civil servants and TDs who are members of a defined-benefit pension scheme and whose earnings exceed the standard tax rate cut-off point. For those below this level, the pay cut should be 5 per cent.
Thirdly, there should be an additional 1 per cent levy for every additional €100,000 of all annual earnings - i.e. earnings over €300,000 would attract a 3 per cent levy.
It may be that only a national government can successfully implement the adjustments necessary to get us through our current troubles. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The ranting against the public service by discredited right-wing commentators must stop immediately. Public sector reform is necessary - and is happening. To continually scapegoat over 300,000 Irish taxpayers as parasites on taxpayers' money is absurd.
Many public and private sector workers were left on the sidelines as an orgy of greed took place around them. Many were forced to move long distances from work due to high property prices. Now the wealthy few and their mouthpieces are blaming the fallout from their avarice on the "bloated" public service.
We all must pull together at this time and stop this playground factionalism. To continue a witch hunt against public service is folly and may only sow the seeds of a wider social breakdown. - Yours, etc,