A chara, – So, it’s Frankfurt’s way, then. – Is mise,
Madam, – The total lack of business experience in the leaders of the coalition government is depressingly manifest in the crazy decision to split the control of Finance between two Ministers.
In my long experience of enterprise I have never come across a scenario where a CEO has appointed two finance directors, one with responsibility for revenue and the other with equal responsibility for spending. This is akin to a football team with two coaches, one who comes up with a game plan for attack while the other wants to make defence the key tenant of the plan.
To further compound the folly, the Minister for public spending who will also be charged with the task of reforming the public sector, is from the Labour Party, whose core electoral support comes from the public servants. To come back to the corporate analogy, this is equivalent to appointing a representative from the shop floor to the post of joint finance director with responsibility for human resource and work practices reform.
The very sad message from this is that Irish politics has not and will not change from the personal pursuit of positions of perceived power made possible by sectoral interest support which demands pay-back.
I thought when I switched my life-long habit of voting from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael this time that I was getting behind a credible movement for authentic reform. I was wrong. Our sovereignty will be not be regained and real power will be yielded in rapidly increasing measure by external forces. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I wish this Government success – the future of our country is at stake. However honesty needs to be a fundamental requirement for its credibility. The programme for government promises “free” GP care for all in the lifetime of the government.
This is, at best, a misleading statement. GP care will have to be paid for either through taxation or through, an as yet undefined insurance scheme – but it will not be free. Let’s have honesty from the outset. No service is free of cost. Someone has to pay – either the taxpayer or the individual citizen through insurance. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Now that Labour has been given responsibility for public sector reform, can we assume that turkeys will be responsible for the Christmas dinner menu? – Yours, etc,