Madam, – Elaine Byrne’s sympathetic description of how Iceland is emerging from its banking crisis (Weekend Review, December 11th) unfortunately failed to mention that Iceland, unlike Ireland, is not a member of the EU or of the euro zone and remains, unlike Ireland, an independent, sovereign and democratic country with its own currency which is free to determine its own policies, laws and destiny.
Ireland, unlike Iceland, is now a mere province of the EU and its destiny is being determined by the unelected technocrats of the IMF and the European Commission and not by Ireland’s democratically elected politicians who are now merely actors pretending to be in charge of a country they have given away thanks to their incompetence and that of the Irish banking, civil service and financial establishment. – Yours, etc,