Sir, – I presume Donal McGrath is referring to me when he criticises "John Meehan" (August 26th).
I don’t know what degree of social protection would satisfy Mr McGrath, but let me remind him that “expenditure on social protection relative to GDP in 2012 remained 11.3 percentage points higher than it had been in 2008, which was the largest increase over this period among the EU members states”. I quote from a recent Eurostat social statistics report. If it wasn’t enough, maybe that’s because the economic shock was so great.
Mr McGrath says I dismissed the Nordic economic model. I did no such thing, merely pointing out that the Nordic countries had problems of their own. Anyhow I doubt there is a single Nordic model; maybe Mr McGrath was thinking of Sweden, where private provision of education and healthcare has become much more common recently (but remain free to users).
Furthermore no developed economy is characterised solely by “unrestrained free markets”.
The ECB might have intervened to prevent a banking collapse if Ireland had played hardball. However, it’s not a gamble I would like to take.
The experience of Greece is that salvation from an extreme crisis comes a high price. Taxpayers in solvent EU states quite understandably will be reluctant to bail-out states which through their own mismanagement have become hopelessly insolvent. – Yours, etc,
JOHN SHEEHAN,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.