Sir, - Your correspondent Kevin Healy (July 2nd) totally misrepresents my position and my recent speech to the Association of European Journalists, when he suggests that I "have no idea what to do with" our huge cash surplus, and the best suggestion I can make "is to spend it on the six applicant members of the EU. . "
At every available occasion since my election as Leader of the Labour Party in November 1997 I have emphasised the need to spend the additional resources now available to us to help tackle such issues as homelessness, social deprivation, hospital waiting lists, the needs of those with disabilities and the continuing shortcomings of our education system.
As recently as my address to the Labour Party Conference in Tralee I repeated my earlier call for a "Decade of Investment" to tackle social deprivation and infrastructural shortcomings. I suggested that the required level of investment over the next decade was not the £20,000 million suggested by the Government, but was closer to £70,000 million.
The wonderful thing about our current economic success is that it allows us the opportunity not just to invest in tackling our own problems at home, but also to assist other countries to learn from our economic and political achievements.
I did not make my proposal for an Irish Institute of Democracy to help each of the applicant states for membership of the EU put in place the secure foundations of a modern civic society out of any misplaced sense of charity, but out of a sense of solidarity. I proposed it because such a programme would help to build a new set of personal, institutional and political relationships with these countries and their citizens - countries that will, in time, take their place around the table of the Council of Ministers and in all of the institutions of the European Union.
The construction of a stable and secure community of continental European states is directly and immediately in Ireland's social, economic and political interest. We can devote a relatively small proportion of the money available to achieving this, while still applying the bulk to sorting out own problems. - Yours, etc., Ruairi Quinn TD, Leader, The Labour Party,
Dail Eireann, Dublin 2.