PAUL KAVANAGH,
Sir, - Why does The Irish Times insist on publishing emotive pictures of paper-cup-holding beggars in conjunction with articles about the Celtic Tiger, as if one was cause and the other effect?
Peadar Kirby (Opinion, January 21st) is the latest in a long line from the school of Doomsday economics which The Irish Times seems to favour. Why is everyone in D'Olier Street so terrified at the prospect of national prosperity? Kirby's piece was shot through with intellectual dishonesty, woolly reasoning and wild generalisation.
"It is questionable", he writes, "whether most people are better off as a result of the economic boom". It is not questionable, Mr Kirby, it is true - as anyone who has tried recently to book a foreign holiday, a long weekend in this country, or a restaurant meal will testify.
It is not the élite of Irish society who are thronging the airports and gridlocking the highways with new cars. It is the ordinary men and women of Ireland who, after decades of being bled white by a draconian tax system, are at last enjoying some discretionary income.
Why these facts are so unpalatable to a coterie of media commentators and some who are professionally involved with the underprivileged is not clear. Every system has its share of casualties, as any visitor to European or North American cities will have seen. The net has yet to be designed that will catch all of those who for one reason or another drop out of the mainstream. This was so before the Celtic Tiger was whelped, is so now, and looks like being the case long after the beast has slunk away through the thicket.
What cannot be denied is that IDA-generated investment has created more jobs for us than we know what to do with and anyone capable of work should be in work. It goes without saying that jobs vary in quality and pay, but can Mr Kirby name a social system where this is not the case?
If The Irish Times wants to match a photograph to the phenomenon of the Celtic Tiger it should use one of the many state-of-the-art manufacturing plants currently employing thousands of people throughout the length and breadth of the country. - Yours, etc.,
PAUL KAVANAGH,
Domville Road,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W.