Sir, - Breda O'Brien (Opinion, March 24th) makes a pertinent point when she goes on about benchmarking "social care workers who stay overnight for troubled children." And why not also benchmark all the unwaged caring work that women do generally, 24 hours a day, to keep society going? It is, in fact, included in the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness setup with a promise, not yet fulfilled, of measuring and valuing. So let's upgrade it with this new buzz-word from the Japanese car industry; let's see our unwaged work - which is most certainly public service work - benchmarked against the work of Dail deputies (who have recently awarded themselves so hefty an increase). Then we might find we are actually receiving a bit of this fairness. Let's make it quite clear: without our work, the TDs could not even begin to do theirs. - Yours, etc.,
Margaretta D'Arcy, St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.
