Sir, - I have had enough .This presidential campaign is really getting to me and I don't think I can take any more of the airheaded waffle which the various candidates are coming out with. "Presidency would mean sacrifice, McAleese says", reads a headline in The Irish Times (October 3rd). Mary McAleese was quoted as agreeing with the late Mother Theresa that one's generosity should be to the extent that one "should give until it hurts"! This kind of statement is hard enough to take, were it from Mother Theresa, but from Mary McAleese . . . no way.
Mary McAleese is a lawyer and lawyers like to be paid in telephone numbers. If elected, she will benefit from a salary in the region of £100,000 a year. After seven years she will receive a pension of £56,000 per year for the rest of her natural life; over an estimated 35 years, this comes to £1.96 million!.
Along with the financial rewards the successful candidate will benefit from living in a mansion, waited on hand and foot by servants, whom she may or may not choose to fire when taking up office (as did the last President).
The level of debate in the presidential campaign have made it clear to me that this country would be better off without a President. - Yours, etc.,
23 Castle Ave., Swords, Co Dublin.