Madam, - Reading Orna Mulcahy's column of October 24th made me realise that it's not just the past which is a different country. The place where some Irish Timesjournalists live is obviously a different place as well.
I'm in my fifties. Like the vast majority of people in Ireland, we've never had an au pair. We raised our own children and we did our own housework, on an equal-opportunity basis, albeit not as often as might be necessary to get into the pages of Good Housekeeping.
Like the vast majority of people in Ireland we don't live in a house with "3,000 sq ft of cream carpet and flat screens over every mantlepiece". And señora doesn't actually have that many boots for any would-be au pair to try on.
Here's another thing. In my generation we were the au pairs, factory workers, waitresses, bartenders and construction workers. There are many Irish people still doing these and similar kinds of work. And we had to put up with a fair few employers with the kind of condescending attitudes displayed by Ms Mulcahy.
Ms Mulcahy laments the lifestyle of her friends who "having traded up only recently are saddled with a gigantic mortgage that doesn't allow for lazy stay-at-home mornings". So why did they trade up? Have they a God-given entitlement to 3,000 sq ft of cream carpet?
Could they not have settled for a bit less arrogance and extravagance and decided to live within their means?
Let's get real here. Out there in middle Ireland, we don't worry about Brazilian gardeners, au pairs and Juanitas. In a country where old and young are being targeted by a Government which knows how to go after the weakest and the poorest, maybe we should, for a change, ask the ridiculously wealthy to pay their share.
Fewer flat screens and a little less cream carpet might be a very small price to pay, compared with schools without teachers, migrants without language support and older people afraid of becoming ill. - Yours, etc,
PIARAS MAC ÉINRÍ,
Model Farm Road,
Cork.