Madam, - The pre-Budget debate on how to relieve the financial pressure on working parents caused by the high cost of childcare was inconclusive. The €1,000 payment for children under six years was the Government's attempt to relieve some of this pressure. This payment is additional to the increase in child benefit.
If subsidising the cost of local childcare was the objective, then Fine Gael is correct in exposing yet another maladroit expenditure. Its observation is not xenophobic because no one is suggesting that child benefit should not be paid to all EU nationals resident in the State irrespective of where their children reside.
If the Government's purpose was merely to hand out €1,000 as a social welfare gift to the under-sixes, then The Irish Times's charge against Fine Gael (Editorial, February 1st) might have some traction.
I am among the 20 per cent of the population who oppose the idea of introducing restrictions on EU migration. The upsurge in nod-and-wink political opportunism exemplified by Pat Rabbitte shocks and disgusts me.
As an Opposition politician, I will be considered a loose cannon for making such an obvious personal observation public. Discipline seems to have replaced decency among social democrats.
Anecdotal evidence of a small number of job displacements of Irish workers by foreigners is not inconsistent with the broader evidence of rising wage rates and falling unemployment in the native workforce across virtually all sectors.
It is up to the partnership talks to widen their remit and ensure a rate for the job across the economy to discourage displacement.
Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, February 2nd) forgets that immigration will slow when Irish job growth contracts. Poland itself will develop economically. In time, all EU states will have open borders to other EU nationals without discrimination. We need foreign workers at present and if they left the health services tomorrow, the hospitals would simply collapse.
To have lived through the evolution of Ireland from an economic slum to where we are now has been exciting. Long may it last. - Yours, etc,
Cllr BILL TORMEY, (Fine Gael), Glasnevin Avenue, Dublin 11.