Madam, - I'm just wondering If the Goverment has been living in the same country as we have for the last few years. In an advertisment in the Limerick Leaderthis week Fianna Fáil has claimed to have "brought prosperity to the young".
In the last six years I have attended two funerals of friends, both in their early twenties, who have commited suicide. Suicide is the leading cause of death in young Irish people yet the Goverment has already slashed funding for suicide prevention from €3.8 million to a measly €1.8 million.
In Scotland, a country whose suicide epidemic hasn't reached the distressing proportions of Ireland, the government has spent €20.6 million on the "choose life" campaign - a suicide prevention programme that has seen the suicide rate drop dramatically since 2002. How can Fianna Fáil claim to bring prosperity to the young when suicide in our young people is increasing year in year out? The Government made it quite clear that it didn't care about the younger generation when it decided to hold voting on a Thursday and not a weekend, leaving only two days to apply for a postal vote.
As a busy fourth year medical student in UCD I have no hope of travelling back to my home town in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, to vote on May 24th, yet I come home every weekend. I hope whatever party gets into government that they think of us, the taxpayers and leaders of tommorow, a bit more. - Yours, etc,
ELISA O'DONOVAN,
Rathkeale, Co Limerick.
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Madam, - Finally Bertie Ahern has come clean and admitted that the real reason his Government has been reluctant to resolve the nurses' dispute is because of the opposition of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to a fair settlement Irish Times, May 8th). We now have a situation where nurses on duty are being docked 13.6 per cent of their pay on spurious grounds without a whimper of protest from the bureaucrats in the ICTU. Add this to the three per cent not paid in December and the two per cent due in June and nurses are losing 18 per cent, close to a fifth of their pay.
This Thatcherite tactic has implications for all workers involved in legitimate disputes into the future as employers can now threaten to dock pay won through past agreements to stymie dissent. Paradoxically the employers' hand has been strengthened by the very organisation which purports to defend the rights of workers.
When the ICTU organised marches in protest at the race to the bottom during the Irish Ferries dispute the INO had a banner and a sizeable turnout at each march. As trade unionists we understand the principal "an injury to one is an injury to all". Unfortunately at Liberty Hall eaten bread is soon forgotten.
Jim Larkin must be turning in his grave. - Yours, etc,
MARY DINEEN, RGN,RPN,
Model Farm Road, Cork
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Madam, - Isn't the Tánaiste being a bit previous when he states, with great certainty, that there is no longer any obstacle to prevent the PDs doing business with Mr Ahern after the election ( Irish Times, May 14th)? What happens if he changes his mind again or, horror of horrors, the unthinkable occurs on May 24th and the voters decide otherwise? - Yours, etc,
PATRICK O'BYRNE,
Phibsborough, Dublin 7
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Madam, - For many a year I have been buying The Irish Timesbelieving it to be a paper with constructive views on society. It has become a paper of tabloid nature in broadsheet format.
Colm Keena's obsession with Bertie Ahern's finances is almost of paranoid proportions.
I don't usually vote Fianna Fáil but it is under very serious consideration now. - Yours, etc,
LORETTA O'BRIEN,
Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1.
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Madam, - Seeing that Drumcondra is almost an anagram for "a conundrum", could a set of mysterious financial circumstances, so enigmatic in nature as to require numerous explanations to make them comprehensible to the sharpest legal minds in the country, while remaining a complete riddle to the population at large, be described substantivally as a "Drumcondrum" and adjectivally as "Drumcondrine" ? - Yours, etc,
DENIS O'DONOGHUE,
Killarney, Co Kerry.