Sir, – Kindly allow me vent my democratic disgust with the complacent and platitudinous apologetics of Dr Gerard Montague (March 27th), who ventures to assure us, “Irish austerity is more purification and retrenchment than decline and fall”.
I detect a distinct echo of the Manchester School of economics’ ideological assurances that “market rationality” was being restored by the famines and land clearances of the 19th century. His “real bottom line” equations compute just as neatly; provided you agree that another generation of taxpayer-educated youth and creativity should be expediently cleansed from the island in order to appease the cumulating dynasties of entrenched and gluttonous wealth; and to ensure that their financial girths are restored to their unsustainable trajectories of insatiable growth, so recently dented by their speculative irresponsibility.
That several recent studies have revealed the extent of actual hunger among Irish children, while agribusiness exports continue to boom, is no coincidence.
That our lordly deputies delivering this "medicine" have multiplied, and are home grown, does not alter the failed economic paradigm of laissez faire , self-rationalising savagery masquerading as civilised rationality.
You might permit me to direct Dr Montague to Swift's Modest Proposal for a better and more enduring vivisection of this collective psychopathology than your hard-pressed space allows. Plus ca change ? – Yours, etc,
DAMIEN FLINTER,
Castleview Estate,
Headford, Co Galway.