Sir, – Kevin Nolan reminds us of an important truth (Letters, July 8th) when he says “Care has to be paid for somehow.” He points out that since he has no children, he’ll get no benefit from the expanding free GP care scheme. But the scandal is deeper.
Why are we expecting child-free people to subsidise playgrounds that have slides too small for them to use, library sections with books too basic for them to enjoy, or indeed primary schools which they no longer have any need for?
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became an adult, I put away those childish notions of caring for vulnerable people, giving everyone their best shot at a good life, and commitments that serve the common good.
The only good we need to value is self-interest. That view is real maturity. Kids can get medical care when they care to pay for it. – Yours, etc,
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
KEVIN HARGADEN,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.