Sir, - The economic partition of Ireland offers the possibility of a county by county class system based on localised versions of GDP and per-capita incomes. The allocation of objective one funding status to 13 counties is provoking a scramble for the title of "impoverished" among counties now considered "developed" by Brussels.
The proposal is essentially an open admission by the Government regarding the inequity of a centralised national development programme. Of course the situation is far more nuanced than generalisations suggest, as people living in the ghettoes of developed areas can testify to. If past practices are grounds for prediction, then we can expect elites in previously neglected areas to now get their piece of the pie as the Government shapes its Machiavellian version of welfare dependency. This is a significant contradiction in light of recent rhetoric criticising the long-term unemployed.
At some stage it must be officially acknowledged that there is a world of difference between people who are living in poverty: with poverty; and despite poverty. One of the powers our Government exercises is to continually bestow the title of poverty upon ordinary people in Ireland in order to qualify for Euro-funds, while at the same time ensuring an ever greater distance between those living with the poverty-identity and those who consume what is otherwise more than enough to meet all of our material needs. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Ryan,
Roscahill,
Co Galway.