Madam, - While it is important that spending in the public sector should be under scrutiny, does the Fás controversy really warrant the amount of media attention it is receiving? After all, we are in one of the gravest financial crises that our country has faced for many years, yet here we are discussing nail bars and golf bills. Let us not forget that at this very moment the Government and the banks are negotiating away, behind closed doors, the independence of our banking sector to shadowy entities with no link or care for the people of this country.
Meanwhile, the very bankers - and Government - that got us into this fix continue in office on their very elevated salaries pretending, as usual, that they know best. At the same time, the private sector, including some well known business tycoons, spend with profligacy on expense accounts that no doubt would make the public service seem like Scrooge.
At least there is some accountability in the public sector.
Furthermore, one of the main reasons that such behaviour took place in Fás was precisely due to its links with the private sector and the constant demand that the public sector act more like the private. This was, for example, the justification behind the regular huge salary rises higher public servants - including ministers, TDs and senators - received. This is not to condone Fás, but it is the double standards of those who are attacking Fás in particular, and the public sector in general, which is rather hard to take. Furthermore, it is providing a distraction from the real causes of our current economic situation - and the social emergency emanating from it - facilitated and perpetuated by the multiple relations and secret deal-making between our public representatives and business. Where is the accountability in that?
Profligate behaviour in the private sector - including and especially the banks - and the public sector should become central to public policy and not this simplified witch hunt against the public sector as if it were the cause of all our woes. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - I continue to read with real anger about the vast wastage of public money as more details of the Fás scandal emerge. Former Fás director general Rody Molloy said he was "entitled" to travel first class at a cost of thousands. Meanwhile, the Minister for Health sees nothing wrong spending €80,000 on using the Government jet for a trip to Florida. The Minister then attempts to worm out of it by saying the Taoiseach approves usage of the jet.
To bring some clarity to the staggering immorality of this wastage, it comes at a time when it is said the annual cost of vaccinating 12-year-olds girls to protect some 31,000 of them from cervical cancer would be €9.7 million. The catch-up programme for about 93,000 girls in the 13- to 15-year-old age group would be €29.2 million.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen defended Molloy's track record as an outstanding public servant and said his €500,000 golden handshake was not a penny more than he was entitled to under public sector policy.
There's that word again. "Entitlement." What about the entitlement of young girls who run the risk of dying from cancer due to these cutbacks? What about the entitlement of people who are forced to spend their last hours on hospital trolleys due to the Government's failure to improve our health service?
Perhaps we should just learn to do our "patriotic duty" and stop moaning. I guess we just simply haven't realised the "gravity of the economic situation" yet, have we? - Yours, etc,
ROUGHAN Mac NAMARA,
Fitzwilliam Court,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
BARRY CANNON,
Park Terrace,
Dublin 8