Sir, - Having read Business This Week in The Irish Times last Friday, I wondered had the lunatics taken over the asylum. A number of articles advocated wholesale tax cuts for the next Budget. Greed is alive and well in the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. How many hospital wards closed in the 1980s have been reopened? Would we not be better off improving our health services, paying nurses a decent wage, reducing student doctors' hours and employing more of them.
Unlike the greedy middle classes who jet off on holidays every summer, there are lots of problems which will not go away. Many working class areas are short on services, but drugs are widely available. The drugs problem, the housing problem, the homeless, our faltering health service will not go away. They need Government money.
Of what use is an extra fiver in tax cuts when such problems have not been faced up to? Of course, the greedy middle classes don't suffer from any of the above.
Lastly, the trade union bureaucrats on their £60,000 salaries should remember that the tax marches of the 1970s were not about tax cuts, they were about shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of those who could pay, like those who earned £60,000 a year. The budget surplus should be used to solve those problems which face us and not to put an extra bottle of champagne on ice for the few.
Gearoid O Loingsigh, Dublin 1