A chara, – Tim Callan is correct in his assertion that examples may not be representative (Business This Week, October18th). The primary reason the particular example he has given is unrepresentative is that it directly compares the cuts suffered by older people with those endured by the young unemployed and other cohorts.
There is an inherent danger in comparing and contrasting older people’s benefits with those given to other generations. Pensioners, by and large, have no further capacity to earn and their social transfers are provided to provide them with an adequate standard of living for the rest of their lives. All going well, our children and grandchildren will work again and will reap the benefits of Ireland’s eventual recovery.
Until that day, comparing the cuts suffered by pensioners with hardships endured by those of other generations serves only to create a sense of intergenerational strife. Budget 2014 was not ageist, nor was it unfairly directed on pensioners alone. Instead, it was a scathing attack on the marginalised. The old, the young, and the sick must rally together after these latest savage cuts, lest we all hang separately. – Is mise,
PETER KAVANAGH,
Information & Networking
Officer,
Active Retirement Ireland,
Mary’s Abbey, Dublin 7.
A chara, – Why is the Government again discouraging people from paying for health insurance by increasing the cost? This makes no sense, particularly when Fine Gael had promised a gradual move to health insurance for all. Car insurance is compulsory, why not health insurance? – Is mise,
SEÁN O’CUINN,
Gleann-na Smol,
An Charaig Dhubh,
Átha Cliath.
Sir, – Being an accomplice after the fact is tantamount to committing the crime. Every time government ministers, individually or collectively, refuse to take positive action against those who abused their positions for personal or corporate gain, they are de facto accomplices.
According to Roosevelt, “to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day”. We need to see this in action if any such corruption exists.
How many times have we heard the Government say it cannot cut the farcical salary of a banker or official? How many time has it said that it has no legal authority to move against a developer or corporate body? Too many times to discuss.
Instead, the Fine Gael/Labour Government, in typical “bully boy” fashion, has imposed fearful hardship on the elderly and the chronically ill, under Budget 2014. While the Government may fear retribution at the ballot box, it obviously cannot, from its position of strength, empathise with the despair of the vulnerable.
Safely wrapped in the protection of power, hubris and large salaries, this Government repeatedly takes from the weakest and defenceless.
Power corrupts and power protects. Sadly it protects the wrong people. – Yours, etc,
JOHANNA LOWRY
O’REILLY,
Moyne Road,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – Perhaps some politician could explain why my wife and I should have our medical card eligibility cap reduced by 25 per cent from €1,200 to €900 per week when a single person “only” has a reduction of 16.67 per cent, ie from €600 to €500 per week.
Surely this in contradiction of our Constitution, which guarantees the position of the family? – Yours, etc,
KENNETH O’GALLIGAN,
Lake Road, Cobh,
Co Cork.
Sir, – When the present austerity era began, I wrote that the Coalition partners needed to identify the various groups of “vulnerable people” in order to protect them. Well the Government certainly took the advice of identifying the “vulnerable people”, however instead of protecting them it learned how to target them. We now have a path laid out on dismantling the support for both “vulnerable people” and the people who care for them.
The measure of a society is how we treat and support our most vulnerable people. The question for the Coalition partners, following the Budget, is how would they feel if what they have done was done personally to them?
We should treat people as we would expect to be treated ourselves. If the present Coalition partners cannot identify with this basic principle, then we will continue on this path with the predictable results of leaving the “vulnerable people” and the people who care for them to pay the price for the mistakes of the past. – Yours, etc,
PAUL HIGGINS,
Manor Hill,
Ballincollig,
Co Cork.
Sir, – Pensioners pay all charges and taxes like everyone else in the State – but usually have smaller and often just fixed incomes to cover things such as property, water, bin and other charges so that the relative impact on them can often be much higher.
For years we were told to save and make provision for old age – many of us tried to do so and made plans based on our payments into the PRSI contributory pension scheme, payments into work pension schemes, payments for private health insurance and also tried to put some savings away for the future when we would have smaller incomes and (perhaps then) a lack of access to credit facilities for any large household maintenance issues.
We now find that “pension promises” and our retirement plans are being both reneged on and dipped into by employers and government !
This despicable Budget affects a lot of vulnerable people, but pensioners are being attacked multiple times in many different parts of it, eg, in relation to telephone allowance, pension levy on already distressed private workplace pensions, tax relief on health insurance on basic plans , over-70s medical cards, discretionary medical cards, medical card prescription charges, the removal of bereavement grant, Dirt increases – and more is to come in the detailed Bills and the €600 million health review.
In the UK and US employers are made accountable for promises of workplace pensions and protection schemes are also in place. In Ireland the opposite is the case, this Government introduced just one solitary wealth tax – a levy on the capital in already distressed private pensions funds which results in annual and permanent reductions for pensioners.
Labour is in Government and holds the Social Protection portfolio – it needs to now start demonstrating that it is not more right wing than George Bush.
I look forward to the senior citizens parliament protest meeting today in Molesworth Street, Dublin. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK CONROY,
Chalfont Avenue,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.