Sir, - Mr Ahern and Mesdames de Valera and Harney are completely off the mark. The main threat to cultural diversity and local economic development is not coming from Brussels but from the multi-national corporations engaged in destructive "globalisation" and despoiling of the planet's resources at an accelerating rate. The largest and most active of these are based in the US, the country which Ms de Valera and her political ally, Ms Harney, cite as the model of perfection.
We have seen recently some examples of the power of unregulated free-marketism effecting the lives of people here; the unprecedented rise in house prices presided over by the present Government, for which the above worthies are collectively responsible; the rapacious monopoly prices rises on fossil fuels; and a deliberate attempt to destabilise democratic governments in Britain, France and Germany by populist agitation and propaganda.
Ms Harney has been running around like a headless chicken trying to cover up the failures of her Government's approach to investment and development as the rug was pulled from under them, time and again, by closedowns and job-cuts as a result of decisions made in boardrooms in Boston or elsewhere without the slightest regard for Irish communities needs, or development, or cultural diversity.
It takes some brass neck for these political nobodies to criticise the development of the European Union, which has subsidised their "tiger" economy with many billions of taxpayers' money and provided them with the infrastructural and training resources which they could then advertise to the American multinationals.
Ireland's interests as a member of the European Union are treaty-guaranteed and have to be taken into account by the executive institutions of the Union. Additionally, we have our representatives in the European Parliament to scrutinise legislation proposed by the Commission. We have no such guarantees or representation in the boardrooms of Boston, Seattle, or Sacramento. - Yours, etc.,
Seamas Ratigan, Dublin 8.