Sir, – It is heartbreaking to think, as winter continues apace, how many families are finding it difficult to heat their homes at a time when spring should have been well underway.
How many children are shivering as they have swapped heated school buildings for frigid homes during the Easter holidays? How many elderly people are suffering ill health due to the cold? All this at a time when, given the prohibitive cost of motor fuel, we are all confined to our homes more than ever?
Yet it is in the Government’s power to cut the tax on fuels, at little or no cost to the Exchequer, since a drop in price would see demand rise in our chilly little isle.
If any Kyoto devotees or members of the troika dare object, I invite them to spend next January in a cottage on a windswept Donegal hillside. I will throw in three bundles of briquettes, one hot water bottle, and an old banger with just enough petrol to get them to the nearest village. Would they last even a week? – Yours, etc,
JENNIFER MOONEY,
Cloghan,
Lifford PO,
Co Donegal.