Madam, - Alan Ahearne, in an article on multinationals in your edition of June 29th headed "Can the American dream continue", makes the following observation: "Developed countries such as Germany, Spain, France and the UK have made moves towards lower corporation tax, aimed at wooing mobile investment".
Multinationals now represent an insidious and real danger to both our social stability and democratic structures. Not only do they play nation states off against one another, but they canvass changes in other states for lower corporation tax to assist their insatiable thirst for growth and expansion.
Hence their hostility to organised labour or any other groups that might attempt to limit their control.
Because of their undoubted role in helping to industrialise this country many of our political elite have adopted a fawning stance to multinational capital, while ignoring their corrosive and corruptive effect on our body politic.
Is it not time for both a national and international debate on the multinational phenomenon to help reassert democratic control and oversight, before their quest for global economic domination becomes impossible to reverse? - Yours, etc,
SEÁN and ROÍSIN WHELAN, Ormond Keep, Nenagh, Co Tipperary.