A chara, - The Minister for Finance should make the money collected from dormant bank accounts available to the local authority of each county for the restoration of county roads and the provision of public housing.
The money in these accounts was generated by people from the area and it is only right that it should remain in the county of origin.
The creative use of the dormant accounts and their accrued interest would help to regenerate the communities which the banks are intended to serve.
This is an ideal opportunity for the Minister at no cost to the Exchequer, to display a positive commitment to rural Ireland and to the solution of two of its greatest problems: the deplorable condition of many county roads and the great shortage of local authority housing.
Successive governments have promised to address these problems but little progress has been made. The Minister speaks of using the money to address social needs. There are none more urgent.
To allow the money from dormant accounts to be subsumed into central government funds would be to dishonour the original investors and to ignore the problems of the communities in which they lived. - Is mise, Cllr Michael Gleeson,
South Kerry Independent Alliance, Clasheen, Killarney, Co Kerry.