Madam, - Vincent Browne is right (Opinion, August 29th). There are a number of tasks for a Labour Party, including notably a commitment to tackling climate change and promoting intercultural dialogue in a diverse society. But fundamentally, any Labour Party which does not have the intellectual and moral capacity to tackle social inequality is not worthy of the name and will be unable to prosper in the manner of other social democratic parties elsewhere in Europe.
What such parties have achieved, particularly in the Nordic countries which Browne highlights for their record of low inequality, is a system of universal welfare and progressive taxation. This secures public services so good that even the middle classes prefer to pay for them through high taxation than to pursue private alternatives; a strongly redistributive transformation of market into post-tax incomes; effective active-labour-market programmes, so workers need not fear the insecurity engendered by globalisation; high investment in childcare and, relatedly, a high degree of gender equality. In this context, social democratic parties can thrive.
The huge irony, of course, is that the economic and social system which prevails in Ireland is the British-type system of selective welfare and tax aversion. This generates widespread social mistrust because it encourages abuse. In such a climate, Labour will always be marginal. It is also a system which, because of the weakness of the public realm, is much more vulnerable to economic shocks, such as those now choking the Celtic Tiger following the excessive private credit expansion in recent years.
It is a particular irony that Eamon Gilmore should not only accept the consensus around low corporate taxation, but in truly Orwellian fashion claim Labour credit for it. Of course this has nothing to do with Labour but goes back to the export tax relief introduced in 1956. Ireland's rate of corporate taxation on multinationals would be zero were it not for EU pressure to raise it to 10 and now 12.5 per cent. It was for decades a deadweight subsidy to capital, which had little or no effect on economic development until the key barriers of detachment from Europe, poor public education and the absence of social pacts were successively addressed.
The maintenance of this policy, in the face of inevitably growing European resentment that such a formerly cosseted member-state should now be so ungrateful, is a Canute-like stance which is destroying painstakingly accumulated international goodwill at great future cost. Why on earth a party committed to international solidarity (never mind to unity within Ireland) should support such a beggar-my-neighbour policy strains belief.
Labour's problem is not one of organisation. It is a failure to point to another economic and social model for Ireland after the Celtic Tiger, which has rendered it marginal. Until and unless it engages with wider debates in European social democracy it will continue to fall below the benchmark its counterparts elsewhere in Europe regularly achieve. - Yours, etc,
ROBIN WILSON, Tate's Avenue, Belfast 9.
Madam, - At the launch of his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2002, Eamon Gilmore said his goal was "to be the first Labour Taoiseach of this country". At the launch of his latest attempt at the leadership this week, Mr Gilmore said Labour should aim to win close to 30 seats at the next general election.
By any measure, this marks a significant lowering of Mr Gilmore's ambition for the Labour Party over the past five years. Perhaps this proves the old adage that people become less radical as they get older. - Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH, Brooklawn, Clontarf, Dublin 3.