Madam, – Pádraic Whyte (November 30th) seems to think that the voters’ reluctance to support Fine Gael, despite the shambles which over a decade of Fianna Fáil government has brought to us, is a function of Enda Kenny’s less than charismatic leadership.
It has much more to do with the fact that Fine Gael is Fianna Fáil by another name. It is only an accident of history that these two parties exist as separate entities and after almost nine decades, the voters are finally figuring this out. The existence of two massive catch-all groupings of the right has sucked the oxygen out of civil and political life in this state long enough.
If we are to build a new republic out of the rubble of this one, I don’t see a place for Fine Gael’s patented piety any more than for the cute-hoorism of Fianna Fáil. – Yours, etc,