What next for Labour?

A chara, – For someone who bemoans "a concerted effort to overlook" Labour's role in government, Willie Penrose does an awful lot of overlooking (April 4th).

To many young people, his claim that Labour “protected core welfare payments” is nothing short of an insult. Joan Burton slashed core unemployment payments for the age group that needs them the most – those under 25 – to just €100 per week, forcing some on to the street or out of the country.

Much of his two paragraphs on his party’s record give the impression of significant progress regarding public sector jobs and in rates of pay. The reality, of course, is that new entrants to the public sector have had their pay savagely cut and many have lost their job security.

Once again, he, like many in his party, overlooks and ignores the young.

READ MORE

If Labour wants to “survive as a political party”, it would be well advised to stop overlooking this disproportionately impecunious section of the population. – Is mise,

SEAN ROBERTI,

Luton, England.

A chara, – Can we dispose of this notion, repeated breathlessly by apologists for the Labour Party's most recent stint in government, that the party "maintained core social welfare payments"? On the same day that Willie Penrose made this claim in a letter to the editor, Rory Hearne rightly pointed out on the opposite page that "the austerity reduction to social welfare for those under 26 remains in place (with those under 25 on €100 a week versus €144 for 25-year-olds and €188 for those over 25)" ("Recession hit hardest at generation now in 20s and mid-30s", Opinion & Analysis, April 3rd).

I’m not sure by what definition of the word “core” the Labour Party operates. As Dr Hearne reminds us, youth unemployment is at 20.1 per cent, despite the “recovery”. But apparently those aged 18 to 25 without work are not a “core” cohort of the dole queue, in the eyes of Labour.

Dermot Madden (April 5th) is equally sanguine – Labour apparently "protected social benefits from major cuts". As with "core", the operative word here is "major". What of the brutal cuts to child benefit, disability services expenditure, traveller education and housing programmes (these by more than 80 per cent) and the one-parent family payment? The latter cut, to a demographic whose level of poverty is already three times the national average, was ostensibly made to "incentivise" lone parents.

It is because of the Labour Party’s complicity in, and at most times vocal support of, these cuts that it has suffered its worst electoral performance. It is certainly not because it got “the optics” wrong.

Indeed, it would be a tall order for the Labour Party to get the optics right on a record of impoverishment and structural oppression of the working class families and marginalised groups whose interests the party claims to represent. – Is mise,

WILSON JOYCE,

Chapelizod,

Dublin 20.