Sir, – I have just finished reading today’s “Letters to the Editor” (October 10th).
While always finding this page to be enlightening and entertaining, it was when I put down the paper that the various headings jumped out at me. In the same order as they were read we have the following: “Cuts to disability allowance”; “Living with motor neuron disease”; “Preventative dental treatment denied“; “Changing child benefit” and then, most tellingly “Frankfurt’s way”. I then look to the opposing page and see Vincent Browne, as apposite as ever, with a piece entitled “Irish solution has been to make most vulnerable pay”.
All this and yet TDs remain the only people in the country to be paid from €12,000 up to multiples of the average citizen’s wage – if that citizen is lucky enough to have a job – just to go to work. They get a massive salary, gross (in both senses) other expenses, vast pensions, and all the other privileges and prerequisites of the TD’s pampered and well-insulated life.
I hope that some of these TDs might have read these pages. Perhaps one of two of them might find their conscience pricked sufficiently that, just for a change, the vulnerable might be considered or even (dare I say it?) protected.
Please, keep up the good work. – Yours, etc,