Madam, - Many people seem to believe that Mr Brian Cowen's Budget merits the epithet "socialist" because it directs many of the available resources at the lower-paid and the less well-off.
The dramatic attempts of the Fianna Fáil/PD Government to reinvent itself as a "caring and sharing" Government testify to the power of the voting public to force politicians to abandon inequitable economic policies. This is the value of democratic politics.
It is worth reminding your readers, however, that if they decide to support the new EU Constitution their power to influence the kind of economic policies that will affect their lives will be considerably reduced.
Constitutions do not normally enshrine an economic ideology, which is the stuff of debate between political left and right, but they set general rules for working out such differences.
By contrast, the new EU Constitution turns neo-liberalism, a competitive market economic model based on the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, and a monetarist economic policy, into constitutional principles, thus depriving EU citizens of meaningful political choice.
Those who are convinced about the importance of real democracy must be concerned about the extent to which neo-liberal or free-market economic policies have been embedded in the new EU constitution. In future, even if Irish citizens vote for a strongly socialist government, that government will be bound by the EU Constitution's free-market prescriptions. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr DEIRDRE DE BURCA,
(Green Party),
Eglinton Road,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.