Madam, – Nuala Hayes finishes a good letter (July 24th) with the words “Our parents’ generation built this Republic”.
I am a middle-aged man and I would like to know if the country needs any more building, or has the brunt of the great work been done already by our current pensioners? How will the current crop of workers be described when they reach old age? When I am 80, will nobody say about me that I, too, “built” this country”?
Rather than single out any specific generation for some extra merit award, I prefer to think that each Irish person – now and in the past – contributes/ed the best they can/could to their country.
When I see the amount of young people emigrating or working for peanuts and then look at the vast number of pensioners – including guards, politicians, civil servants, etc – with generous pensions, not to mention free travel, medical cards, line rental, and so on, I am not sure how much the young people of today’s Ireland “owe” their pensioners.
I would like to know what great deeds were carried out by any pensioner who now receives more than, say, €500 per week, not counting the aforementioned benefits?
I say this in a spirit of social solidarity and especially in the present crisis. By all means, let us look after pensioners receiving a small pension, but a large percentage of pensioners never had it so good. I believe that history will reveal this generation of pensioners to have been the luckiest of all, as the future does not look very good for the rest of us here.
Political correctness should not blind us to the more pressing need to fund education for the disadvantaged, jobs for the unemployed and health access for the less well off. When people bandy about the word “vulnerable”, it should be applied to the latter cases.
Everybody builds and built this country. – Yours, etc,