Madam, - It would be very easy to demolish Brendan Quinn's heated attack on public service workers (November 19th), or to dismiss it as yet another of those ill-informed but increasingly frequent attacks that those of us who work in that "protected and mollycoddled" sector must endure.
Mr Quinn's remarks are relatively mild. During the recent nurses' industrial action, and now as talks on a new pay deal begin, I have read and heard comments about public servants which, if aimed at an ethnic minority or members of the Travelling community, would have their authors in court facing charges of incitement to hatred. Normal rules regarding insult and abuse don't seem to apply to this particular sub-species.
Like the vast majority of public servants, I work in cramped, over-crowded, under-funded conditions every day of my working life for a very modest wage - not, in fact, must higher than Mr Ahern's recent pay increase. I can be dismissed in the same way any other worker in the country can, and from my very first day at work 27 years ago, I have contributed a significant percentage of every pay-cheque to a pension fund which, if I survive to pay into it for another 13 years, will yield me a pension of half my salary, less tax.
In spite of constant, deliberate misinformation to the contrary, public servants aren't "given" a pension; they pay dearly for it over a 40-year period.
However, tempting as it may be, I don't see Brendan Quinn as the enemy here. Like myself and so many others he is "busy getting on with life" in difficult and stressful working conditions. Ireland's so-called captains of industry and their representative body Ibec must rub their hands in glee when they see poor and modestly-paid workers in the public and private sectors at each others' throats, while the profit-margins of those at the top spiral upwards, their tax liability evaporates, and the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us continues to widen.
Instead of attacking each other, perhaps workers like Brendan Quinn and myself would do better to target those people at the top whose preoccupation with profit margins and their own wealth has created the miserable conditions the rest of us have to work and live in.
Does anyone know where we can find a good trade union? - Yours, etc ,
BERNARD LYNCH, Glendale Meadows, Leixlip, Co Kildare.