Sir, - Dr Garret FitzGerald has finally completed the journey from a progressive and much admired Foreign Affairs Minister in the 1970s to an out-of-touch and dangerously misinformed ex-politician and economist, judging by his piece in your edition of August 4th.
He suggests that Ireland is a more unequal society after a decade of unprecedented growth and, that in terms of the share of resources allocated to public services and to social action to reduce poverty, Ireland has become the most right-wing country in Europe. He further appears to be advocating a return to the failed high-tax economic policies of the 1980s to which his government contributed so much and in the process brought our economy to the verge of bankruptcy.
Dr FitzGerald compares our spending on social services as a percentage of GNP unfavourably with our mainland EU partners. These are the same countries that continue to have stubbornly high unemployment and poor productivity growth.
Does he agree with the current French prime minister, Mr Jospin, that the way to reduce unemployment is to introduce a 35-hour working week, thereby reducing productivity and competitiveness? This is the same prime minister who told our Taoiseach that lower taxes, particularly lower company taxes, were "immoral". If this country copied such daft policies, with the result of lower productivity and perhaps 100,000 more unemployed, our percentage of GNP spending on social policies might again match our EU partners.
I disagree with the economists who say this country cannot sustain its present high economic growth levels into the future. Ireland has the potential to become the Hong Kong or the Singapore of Europe. Our economy is still so small as a percentage of the EU economy that it could double in size again without causing serious economic dislocation to our neighbours, but this won't happen if we follow the daft advice of the likes of Dr FitzGerald and the French prime minister.
A true liberal believes in freeing the economy and in lower taxes, which allow people to make their own choices. A true liberal also believes in social justice. I would suggest that the biggest contributor to social justice and eradicating poverty is to give people the dignity of a job and then to lower taxes to make it worthwhile for them to work and let them decide for themselves how best to spend and save their earned wages.
This country has shown over the last decade that the economic and productivity growth of a low-tax regime makes more money, not less, available for spending on social policies.
Measuring spending on social services as a percentage of GNP is a dangerous, indeed reckless, approach. Spending should be specifically targeted at public services that particularly address the real needs of those in the poverty trap and not chase some Holy Grail percentage benchmark thought up by some economist. Full employment has exposed the true level of underlying poverty in this country. The present Government has rightly made huge resources available to address the problem but with limited results because of serious structural faults in the delivery of some public services.
Resolving the problems of effective and efficient delivery of adequately resourced public services to eradicate poverty, the same way we eradicated unemployment, is the challenge to which Dr FitzGerald should address himself, instead of trying to resurrect the discredited policies of the past. - Yours, etc.,
Tadhg B. Kearney, The Fairways, Castletroy, Limerick.