Madam, - Liz O'Donnell takes the Labour Party to task for, among other transgressions, our call for a rebalancing of the income tax system (Opinion & Analysis, January 15th).
That Ms O'Donnell should find such a prospect "scary" is hardly surprising, in view of her rather novel characterising of low tax rates as "an instrument of social and economic justice".
Of course, we should keep taxation as low as possible consistent with the level and quality of public services we wish to have. Pat Rabbitte has stated that tax rates will not increase under Labour. But he is absolutely right to advocate a fairer taxation system, a subject upon which you will hear precious little from the PDs in the coming months. Perhaps what really scares Liz is the possibility that the very rich in our society might be asked to pay more - or in some cases, actually to pay some tax in the first place?
The idea that we have low tax is a con trick anyway. We don't. Instead, we have had repeated increases in indirect taxes and in service charges. And while the PDs continue to peddle the falsehood they call a low-tax economy, most ordinary people know the reality - the reality of colossal increases in the price of property, and in the cost of childcare, transport and other basic services.
Ms O'Donnell displays her party's true colours when she criticises the Labour Party for seeking more public spending "even when not confronted by a serious problem". So can we take it, therefore, that the PDs do not see any serious problems in our public services? No serious problems in our two-tiered health services? No problems with childcare provision? No problems with our gridlocked roads and woefully inadequate public transport? The truth is that while Liz O'Donnell and the PDs are well tuned to the interests of the rich and the super-rich, and those who are more than able to provide for themselves, they have little or no interest in the wider objective of creating a fair society. They are in smug denial about the level of inequality, at the same time as their leader expressly advocates inequality as a good thing.
Ms O'Donnell demands supporting evidence from Dr Garret FitzGerald for his assertion that we are one of the most unequal societies in Europe. Perhaps she missed the EU survey published by the CSO last November, which confirmed that nearly one in five people are at risk of poverty in Ireland because of their low income thresholds. And 7 per cent experience consistent poverty, going without necessary food, heating or clothing.
The gratuitous claim that we in the Labour Party are handcuffed to the trade unions is nonsense. Liz O'Donnell cites reform of bus transport in support of this contention - a curious charge from a party which deliberately blocked the provision of urgently-needed new buses in Dublin through lengthy ideological posturing in Government. The unions are well represented in the Labour Party but the relationship is as nothing compared with the stranglehold which developers and the construction industry have over the PDs' friends in Fianna Fáil.
Floating voters are unlikely to be taken in by O'Donnell's defence of a discredited Government. More likely, come election time they will give her and her party colleagues a much needed reality check. - Yours, etc,
Cllr ALEX WHITE, (Labour candidate, Dublin South), Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.